The Very Best Gifts: North Face Shoes? A Killer Jumpshot? Or Something Beyond...
I had the thought awhile ago that sometimes the best gifts are those we don’t desperately require or need. Say you get something besides socks for Christmas. Or a girl smiles at you when your self-esteem no longer depends on it. Perhaps you’re offered a good job when you’re already financially secure; you nail a dagger-in-the-heart jumpshot when you hit the previous game-winner; the Kansas Jayhawks grab another hot recruit or you are given one more good book when you already have enough reading for the next year.Such scenarios remind me that God delights in abundance. We have an extravagant Creator—and while he doesn’t toss us shiny trinkets or wanton luxuries, he is constantly giving us refreshingly unnecessary things. God’s generosity is so gratuitous, occasionally it reaches the point of embarrassment.
To see this truth, realize first that it does not extend merely (or primarily) to material goods. We are all , even the poorest and most pain-wracked of us, given much, much more than we can really handle. You drive down the interstate and see a range of mountains that, strictly speaking, did not really need to be there. You look up and the sun has not only risen, it has done so beautifully. It rains, and then trees conspire to reflect themselves in puddles. Or—in a word—tigers. Or sequoias. A pale white orchid growing in a swamp. I mention only nature, but divine extravagance gleams everywhere.
So then, sometimes the best gifts are those we don’t desperately need. As I said, I had that thought awhile ago. But then it was subverted by a subsequent reflection: The best gifts are those we desperately need. I know, I know.
But really, to say anything else would be suicidal. If I couldn’t breathe, I wouldn’t laugh childishly when I unwrapped my new harmonica. The beauty of my sleek new North Face trail-runners rises from the fact of me having socks to wear inside them—and feet to put the socks on. That ridiculous spinning, left-handed lay-up I bagged the other day depended on—well, yeah, my mad hoops skills—but beyond that, on the fact that hoops is even a sport to be exploited. I could have been born in an era where “hoops” was a game involving the width of women’s skirts.
On a more necessary level still, I recognize the bright and terrible realities that we could never buy or enter by ourselves—ultimate truth, grace, Christ himself—but upon which our lives nonetheless depend. The measure our desperate need for these things may be surpassed only by their distance from our clutching fingers. And how far these things lie outside our grasp may be hinted at by how far they lie beyond our comprehension. I cannot see a “road to heaven” but I know that earth’s highways leave me strangely empty. Who would ever ask “eternal life” for Christmas? But one gets it and realizes one has been feeling the lack for a lifetime.
The gifts are untouchable until they are given, and then all of life begins expanding, unfolding, rushing in. The intangible has been fleshed out, the invisible rendered in vivid hues; the enigmatic hero has written an autobiography. Inaccessible beauty is handed down, and all of life lights up with wonder.
Suddenly there is a place for Jayhawks and Dickens. The unnecessary can be savored because the essential has appeared to us.
And so I conclude that the best gifts, in the end, are those we desperately need and could never possess if they were not given. The unnecessary gifts that I believe God does, in a very real sense, intend for us to have, come in second—although they are very useful in terms of birthdays.
2 comments:
Ariel, well said. Something else to consider is that we're just "renting" these items anyway; God has provided them for us to enjoy while we are here.
Wonderful. The ultimate Being is the
breath of Life. A giver of all thing
beautiful!
Aloha..
Post a Comment