December 26, 2012 (Sam)
“Sovereign Lord, as you have promised,
you now dismiss your servant in peace.
For my eyes have seen your salvation,
which you have prepared in the sight of all people,
a light for revelation to the Gentiles
and for glory to your people Israel.”
-Simeon (circa 4 BC)
This was the declaration that Simeon made about Jesus after first seeing him in the temple courts of Jerusalem in Israel. He proclaims that he has seen the salvation of God in this child, who, as a firstborn male, has been taken to the temple by his parents to be consecrated to God.
“The salvation of God.” Jesus was sent to be the Savior of the world because we needed a savior. We were dead in our transgressions and sins and God sent Jesus to save us from our sins. Without a savior we were doomed. When Jesus was on earth, he compared us to a lost sheep. But the sheep doesn’t stay lost; the shepherd went after it. In the same way, Jesus had to come down to earth to rescue us, to save us. This is his gift of salvation.
But one interesting fact about this gift of salvation was that it wasn’t exactly optional for those hoping to be saved. It was needed. It was a necessity. This gift means life, and without It, there is no life. “He who has the Son has life; he who does not have the Son of God does not have life” (1 John 5:12).
And this is what I think Christmas is all about. It’s about celebrating the birth of Jesus, his coming to earth, and the salvation that he brought with him. It’s about celebrating the Gift. I assume that this is where the tradition of gift-giving on Christmas came from, and what a wonderful tradition to remind us of what we have been given.
This year, we got to celebrate Christmas with 14 of our Kenyan friends, many of whom we’ve come to know from the community here through our work with Beacon of Hope. We were surprised when many of them told us that this was the first Christmas they’ve ever celebrated. Christina and two of her friends spent all morning in the kitchen cooking up delicious traditional Kenyan food. In the afternoon, four families, all headed by single mothers, meandered into our apartment and the festivities began. I was dubbed the Chief Entertainer for the kids, and after two hours of getting hit in the face with balloons and kicked in the shins, we sat down to eat together. Christina and the girls went all out: fried chicken, pilau (spiced rice), chapati (Indian bread), matoke (mashed plantains), coleslaw, kachumbari (tomato, onion, cilantro and salt) and fresh fruit for desert. We ate until our bellies swelled. Then we sat down and read the Christmas story from Luke 2 together. First, I would read in English, then one of the girls would translate into Swahili.
Next came the gifts. I’ve never quite experienced a present-opening ceremony like that before. The kids were first. They sat in the middle of the floor with their gifts wrapped on their laps just looking at them; they had no idea what to do. After some prompting, they carefully tore them open. Then the mothers each got a bucket full of food to take home. They clapped and cried. I’ve never experienced such gratitude and appreciation in such a concentrated dose in my life. People were tearing up, saying how they’ve never been given a gift like this before. And the curious part about it all, was that they didn’t get anything extraordinary or extravagant; it was just food.
I personally love the tradition of gift giving. I love giving and I love receiving. But the more birthdays and Christmases I celebrate, the more I notice that in our culture, we rarely give out of necessity; we seem, more often, to give out of generosity, or maybe even obligation. I mean let’s be honest, getting someone a cocktail blender for Christmas because you can’t think of anything else that person might need clearly demonstrates that that person probably has no real or immediate physical needs. But Christmas for us this year was different. When the gifts we receive are needed, or life-giving, they take on a whole new meaning.
Now I’m not trying to equate the gift of food to the gift of Jesus, but in different ways, each is necessary for our existence. Without food, we perish physically. Without Jesus, we perish spiritually.
I hope that you will join us in celebrating this Christmas season as we rejoice in the greatest gift that has ever been given: Jesus himself.
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Praise his great name. We have been given a life-giving Gift.
Check out our video of our Christmas together below!
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