How Silently the Gift is Given

The sky was clear, crisp and studded with stars as I walked across the campus of St. Olaf College toward my dormitory. It was early December in Minnesota, back in the day when winter was really winter and a walk across campus after midnight could be sheer agony. Breath clung as hoar frost on my free range 1970s collegiate beard. I was sure the water in my eyes was turning to ice.

Something else hovered in the air with the cold. This was the weekend of the annual St. Olaf Christmas Festival. I had worked the late shift in my work-study position as night security supervisor for the student union. I had spent hours on my feet making sure everything was okay for the Norwegian food buffet, pointing alums and visitors toward the beloved concert, helping folks find restrooms and coatracks and wandering family members, making my way each hour through the bustling hoards of excited folk to make sure the right doors were open and the others ones closed. Finally, well after midnight, after the last of the yuletide revelers had left, I made my final rounds, turned off the lights, locked up the big, now silent building, and made my way across the wind-swept campus toward bed.

I caught myself humming “Beautiful Savior” as I walked. Although I had not been at the concert that weekend, I knew this hymn had been sung by candlelight as the closing piece, as it had since, well, since forever. My shivering body begged me to hurry through the cold toward the top berth of our triple-bunked dorm room. My spirit implored me to slow down, look around, and take in the luminous winter world crafted by the beautiful Savior of whom I sang like an echo of the concert ended hours ago.

Neither of my roommates was in our room when I arrived. The glimmering lights of our little desk-borne Christmas tree drew me in. I sat at my desk, thawing hands nestled in my coat pockets, basking in the graceful light shining softly in the dark room.

In the shadows under the tree I noticed a small wrapped package bearing my name. It had not been there when I left earlier in the day. I picked it up and noticed an electrical cord running from it like a long, slithery tail to the wall outlet. What gadget did my roomies give me for Christmas? I tore off the paper to discover that it was…my alarm clock, the one that roused me from sleep every day. They wrapped my alarm clock?!

Now I saw another wrapped gift pulling low a branch of the tree by a duct-taped hook. Round and heavy…unhooked and unwrapped it was a prized baseball from my high school career. Then, on my pillow a long, thin, carefully wrapped pretzel stick from the big plastic jar of them I brought and shared from home.

My eyes thawed and I wept at the goofy love of my roommates. I took a deep breath of the room’s warm air and whispered a prayer of wonder and thanks, blinking at the soft light glistening in the prism of my tears.

Isn’t this what the manger-borne Jesus reveals for us, the giftedness of our every day? Doesn’t God in Christ carefully wrap with goodness and love the very things and people we take for granted day by day and give them back to us glistening with grace? Isn’t it so that this Jesus, this Emmanuel, makes holy what we think is merely mundane?

Yes. Yes. Yes. It is so. How silently the wondrous gift is given!

Gratitude

I doubt that there is such a thing as a measure of spirituality, but if there is, gratitude would be it. Only the grateful are paying attention. They are grateful because they pay attention, and they pay attention because they are so grateful.

M. Craig Barnes, The Pastor as Minor Poet

At a recent meeting of the Board of Regents of St. Olaf College Darrell Jodock, Martin E. Marty Professor of Religion and the Academy, reflected on key characteristics that undergird higher education in the Lutheran tradition. The first characteristic of a Lutheran college or university, Dr. Jodock suggested, is “fostering a pervasive sense of giftedness and gratitude.”

As Dr. Jodock spoke, it occurred to me that “fostering a pervasive sense of giftedness and gratitude” is not only a key characteristic of Lutheran colleges and universities; this is a hallmark of any (Lutheran) Christian missionary community. When we are unaware of how gifted we really are, we tend to give most of our crabby attention to what we don’t have and to believe that we have earned what little we do have. We then clutch it with a white-knuckled grip and a stingy heart. But I am convinced that a deep awareness of just how gifted we are in God’s grace gives birth to gratitude which overflows with generosity and leads to living with open hands to receive and share God’s abundant gifts.

This is as true for communities of faith, like congregations, as it is for individuals. In fact, much of the apostle Paul’s writing about giftedness in Christ was written to communities, not to individuals. Paul appears to be quite concerned that communities of faith foster a pervasive sense of giftedness and gratitude that forms disciples who embody God’s own generosity.

Now we have received not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is from God, so that we may understand the gifts bestowed on us by God.

[1 Corinthians 2:12]

And God is able to provide you with every blessing in abundance, so that by always having enough of everything, you may share abundantly in every good work.

[2 Corinthians 9:8]

This time of year many of our communities are drawing up budgets and engaging in stewardship conversations, emphases and campaigns at the same time that we are making plans for family and other Thanksgiving celebrations. What if we let the latter influence the former? What if we spent time in committee meetings, worship services, council meetings, Bible studies and classes paying attention to God’s generosity with, for and among us? What if rather than spending so much time focused on what we think we don’t have we encouraged one another to pay attention to the gifts God has given us?

What if we made some part of every congregational gathering a mini-Thanksgiving, this fall and year ‘round? You know the Thanksgiving dinner routine in so many households: “Let’s go around the table and share something we are thankful for this year.” What if we engaged a similar discipline in our gatherings, helping one another pay attention to the amazing giftedness of this community of faith and cultivating gratitude to God and one another?

“Jane, where do you see God’s abundant gifts in this community?”

“For what or who in this community do you give God thanks, John?”

As you therefore have received Christ Jesus the Lord, continue to live your lives in him, rooted and built up in him and established in the faith, just as you were taught, abounding in thanksgiving.

[Colossians 2:6]