What to Give the One Who Has Literally Everything

The holidays are, for better or worse, a season of busyness--Q4 is ending, travel is common, parties are happening, and it's easy to lose track of the time. Before you know it, Jesus's birthday is here and . . .oops, I didn't get him anything! Though we know Dec. 25th is almost certainly not the day Jesus was born, we don't actually know the day, so it makes sense to use an imputed date for celebratory purposes--that way there's only one party to plan and one set of thank you cards to write.

Now I don't always get people presents on their birthdays, but Jesus did die an unjust death and serve as the propitiation of God's righteous wrath toward me and rise again with new life that he's graciously offered to me (which comes with inheritance in God's kingdom), so I would feel awkward if I didn't get him anything. 

But what do you get someone who literally has everything? In my brief research for this post, I was unable to find a suitably concise list. So I took the task upon myself. 

Fortunately, Jesus (the Word of God made flesh) has left some clues in the paper version of himself.

Here's a non-comprehensive, concise list of things I, and anyone else who would like to follow Jesus in light of his atoning, life-giving, costly sacrifice can get him.

Things to Get Jesus for His Birthday

1. Mercy--In Hosea 6 (captured in this great Shane and Shane piece) God says in frustration at the Israelite's inability to get him the right thing, 'I desire mercy (NIV, steadfast love-ESV, loyalty-NASB), not sacrifice, and acknowledgement of God rather than burnt offerings.' Jesus reiterated the importance of this passage by instructing the Pharisees (i.e., the pious, nice, good, church folk of the day) to go learn what it meant in Matthew 9. God is apparently not so much into rituals or tradition for the sake of it (oops), but is more into loving people, forgiving them as he forgave us. I like how Paul said it in Ephesians 4, 'Be kind and compassionate to one another, forgiving one another, just as Christ God forgave you.' In other words, Jesus gave us forgiveness so we could use it to forgive others--kind of like a way better version of white elephant.
2. Humility--David, the great king of Israel, a man after God's own heart, did a kind of terrible job at showing mercy to Uriah, an active duty soldier, and his cry of distress to God in Psalm 51 starts with 'Have mercy on me, O God, according to your steadfast love.' (I included this to reiterate the first point). David goes on to say he knows of his transgressions and sin, i.e., he is not shy about his own shortcomings--God wants us to be honest about our brokenness and not act self-righteous. David goes on with some beautiful theological exposition of God's saving grace, and says 'For you will not delight in sacrifice, or I would give it; you will not be pleased with a burnt offering. The sacrifices of God are a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart, O God, you will not despise.' God actually makes clear that he has a pretty simple ask of us in Micah 6, 'He has told you, O man, what is good; and what does the Lord require of you, but to do justice, and to love mercy (NIV, kindness / steadfast love-ESV), and to walk humbly with your God?'
3. Love God, Love Others--It seems like two things, but Jesus seemed to think they were so integrally connected he tied them together as the greatest commandment. In Matthew 22, he tells us the greatest commandment is to 'love the Lord your God all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind. This is the first and greatest commandment' Tall order, but clear enough--Love God. But he goes on, 'A second is like it; you shall love your neighbor as yourself.' Love my neighbor, i.e., anyone with whom I am in proximity, as myself--like, actually? I spend a disproportionate amount of my time thinking about myself and how I can be happy and healthy (e.g., what job to take, where to live, how to make my wife and child happy so I can be happy, how to do enough good to feel good about myself). Jesus wants that from me, for me to love other people, even those who actively dislike me (cf. Matthew 5, Luke 6-love your enemies, pray for those who persecute you)? What if that's not at Target?
4. Glory--The subtext of all of this is Jesus just wants to make known what a great guy/God he is. Egotistical? For me to want people to spread the word of what a great guy I am, sure, but for someone who is literally the most good and most loving and infinitely capable of showing that love and forgiving people of the sin the breaks them apart and tears them up? It would probably be a bad idea not to make that person and their goodness/greatness known. In fact, God tells us that's literally why he made us. Isaiah 43 (which is a great Christmas text) says 'Fear not, I have redeemed you. . . everyone who is called by my name, whom I created for my glory, whom I formed and made.' (read the whole chapter if you haven't, it's pretty great).

A Non-Comprehensive List of Things Not to Get Jesus

1. Sin-I know I at least have given him plenty to die for, I don't think he wants anymore, even though that's I'll I've been giving him since. . . forever, and something I've been giving him way too much of this close to his birthday.
2. Self-righteousness--Really a subset of sin, this is a big problem in my life and something I see causing others distress all the time. Also known as pride, self-righteousness is kind of the opposite of humility and brings God no glory and shows neither he nor others love. So... yeah, don't give Jesus a box of self-righteousness for Christmas.
3. Rejection-Jesus's will is for everyone to know his goodness and his redeeming, saving love, that no one should perish by relying on their own lack of righteousness when God makes the new heaven and new earth pure and free of sin, death, and pain. He doesn't wish for anyone to die (cf. 2 Peter 3:9, Ezekiel 18:32). He invited you to his birthday party, how rude would rejection be for a present anyway?
4. An iPhone 6--I have no Biblical reason to believe this, but my gut tells me God doesn't like Apple products

Some textual analysis also reveals, God's interest in Himself (via his own name), his interest in telling off sin, and his frequent references to mercy, grace, forgiveness, and humility. 

Some Common Words Frequency within the Bible

Source: OpenBible.info

On Giving and Thanks

The following is a reflection on two particular holidays, Thanksgiving and Christmas:

Consider the following Google Ngram view, which illustrates the percentage the key words make of all words in a large corpus of published works:


According to this pretty compelling piece of data analytics, Thanksgiving has gotten less and less important in our culture, particularly relative to Christmas (or at least we've been writing about it less and less).

Consider also the following Google Trends chart, which shows relative search volumes of the two words in the US:

As seen above, our search volumes skew heavily toward Christmas, on average four times as much as Thanksgiving--even in the weeks leading up to Thanksgiving.

In fact, in recent years Black Friday searches have overtaken Thanksgiving searches in November.

Is this significant?

I find the premise of Thanksgiving quite appealing--time to reflect on what we're thankful for, gathered around family and friends. I also find that experientially, retailers don't seem that interested in creating a Thanksgiving buzz. On November 1st I noticed Target had switched from Halloween themes to Christmas themes. Thanksgiving was skipped entirely in my consumer marketing experience (perhaps my own fault for shopping at Target?).

I think the magic and experience of Christmas is wonderful, too, for sure. The colors, smells, sounds, and general aura of the 'holiday season' is a great distraction from (or perhaps complement to) the cold winter weather. But I fear what we as an American culture have done to Christmas has destroyed the true meaning of the holiday and made Thanksgiving a victim as well. (Again, this post is not about all holidays and how Christmas has overshadowed them, just about Thanksgiving).

What Thanksgiving Does and Could Mean

The history of Thanksgiving is perhaps a little too saturated with cultural and civil religion. However, Lincoln's declaration that we set aside a national day of "Thanksgiving and Praise to our beneficent Father who dwelleth in the Heavens" brings up an important point about giving thanks: it is to someone.

To give thanks to no one in particular is a pretty vacuous or even self-serving gesture, isn't it? If I say "I'm so thankful for my job" with no object of my thanks, I'm really just saying "I'm glad I'm really awesome and got this job" or "I'm really lucky that the timing worked out." Am I thanking myself, the unfolding of events, fate, luck, or some other vague deterministic or random force for my circumstances? Am I thanking the privilege I have, particularly as one who is white and well-educated? I don't feel particularly thankful that privilege comes at the expense of others (though in honesty it might be hard to notice from how much I've capitalized on my privilege).

In its conception, I don't believe Thanksgiving was meant for thanking such abstract things. Now I could say "I'm thankful to my managers for hiring me," which is more precise and steers my thanks more intentionally. But again, I'm also implicitly thankful they didn't hire someone else, who, for all I know, needed this job even more than I did. However, I do feel gratitude toward my employer for hiring me, as the arrangement has turned out mutually beneficial (or so I perceive).

So perhaps we miss something in Thanksgiving when we are thankful in the abstract; perhaps we should be thankful in particular, and make a habit of actually thanking those who have been good to us. I personally know I am too quick to jump to the abstract in lieu of the particular and have a lot of opportunity this season to express particular thanks (e.g., my manager, my dad, my wife, my community group leader).

But what of the commercial emphasis on Christmas at the expense of a retail cue to think about Thanksgiving and a seemingly missing emphasis on the giving thanks part of Thanksgiving? Is it sufficient that we see the inventory of stores rearrange to emphasize the foodstuffs that we associate with Thanksgiving?

What Christmas Could and Does Mean

In my observations, the American understanding of Christmas is epitomized by the pithy phrase 'to give is better than to receive.' I believe this is because giving often requires a purchase and to give is to stimulate economic activity, which we for some reason think should be perpetually upward. To extend the benefits and mitigate the limited seasonality of 'holiday shopping,' it appears retailers and marketers have gone with the approach to extend the shopping season back into early November.

To be fair, I think there is something wonderful and magical about Christmas in that soft, colorful lighting and enchanting music (not carols or jingles) add to the glory and charm of winter. I don't like associating Christmas with fall; to me it ruins the magic. Granted, winters seem more intense and perhaps arrive earlier as well, but I felt the best part of Christmas was how ephemeral it was. For a brief period we get to enjoy trees covered in lights and music that makes snow more enchanting.

However, I, not being particularly fond of commercialism in general, do not particularly enjoy the retail side of Christmas--what has become an obligatory exchange of things for practicing Christmasers. Christmas has a more complex history than Thanksgiving, but its evolution into a season of sales and economic activity at the end of Q4 does not seem at all in line with its spirit (though it does create a lot of pretty colors and packages).

I think the term 'holiday season' more adequately captures what Christmas has become, and given its history I don't find Christmas that particularly Christian a holiday to begin with. So I don't mind that conservatives feel like they're losing the war on Christmas, nor do I mind that Christmas is still metonymous for the magic of the winter holidays.

But should Christmas subsume Thanksgiving to bring winter cheer to late fall? I don't think so.

What I'm Thankful for

Christmas as the symbol of winter cheer and the season of perpetual hope is great--Christmas as the dogmatic celebration of the birth of Jesus is not so much something I'm into. Perhaps not the reason you might think--it's because I feel I should celebrate the birth of Jesus (nominally the purpose of Christmas) for Thanksgiving.

Ultimately, I agree with Lincoln that we should take time to give thanks to God. Not only is God particularly the object of my thanks, but Jesus is particularly the subject of it. The incarnation of Jesus, God's condescension to the baseness of humanity, gives us hope that we can be free of sin (i.e., that which is not of God, who is good, which therefore is not good) and promised a restoration and redemption of all things. Of course, it is not Jesus's birth as a baby that brings hope, but rather his 'birth' (i.e., new life) after his death that effectually conquered the power of sin and death to free us to a living hope.

The birth of Jesus as an event (i.e., a birthday) is a very small piece of a much grander narrative of reconciliation and redemption that is worth being thankful for, but not necessarily worth buying a lot of stuff for. I am thankful for the incarnation much more so than I am for the Nativity scene. Through it (and it's culmination in Christ's death and resurrection) there is power to be reconciled to God and made new--that is what I am most thankful for. If it is in fact better to give than to receive, God has given us literally everything, and that makes him the best.

In fact, I can, because of God, be thankful to God for any given thing. And I should be thankful for everything He's given me, even if it's not something I particularly enjoy. Thanksgiving has the possibility to be a time of deep reflection and a chance to reorient our hearts toward God in a way that fosters humility and leads to selfless giving--which is perhaps what Christmas is meant to be about, but lacks because we don't take the time to root our giving in thankfulness to the one who has given all--including the dignity and life of His Son--to us. And He has so abundantly much that we can give to others, not just things, but the same love He showed us when he forgave our sins and brought us back into His family. And what better time than Thanksgiving to add to our family and multiply what we have to be thankful for?


My meditation for this holiday is Psalm 118:

1 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

    for his steadfast love endures forever!

2 Let Israel say,

    “His steadfast love endures forever.”

3 Let the house of Aaron say,

    “His steadfast love endures forever.”

4 Let those who fear the Lord say,

    “His steadfast love endures forever.”

5 Out of my distress I called on the Lord;

    the Lord answered me and set me free.

6 The Lord is on my side; I will not fear.

    What can man do to me?

7 The Lord is on my side as my helper;

    I shall look in triumph on those who hate me.

8 It is better to take refuge in the Lord

   than to trust in man.

9 It is better to take refuge in the Lord

    than to trust in princes.

10 All nations surrounded me;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

11 They surrounded me, surrounded me on every side;

    in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

12 They surrounded me like bees;

    they went out like a fire among thorns;

in the name of the Lord I cut them off!

13 I was pushed hard, so that I was falling,

    but the Lord helped me.

14 The Lord is my strength and my song;

    he has become my salvation.

15 Glad songs of salvation

    are in the tents of the righteous:

    “The right hand of the Lord does valiantly,

16 the right hand of the Lord exalts,

    the right hand of the Lord does valiantly!”

17 I shall not die, but I shall live,

    and recount the deeds of the Lord.

18 The Lord has disciplined me severely,

    but he has not given me over to death.

19 Open to me the gates of righteousness,

    that I may enter through them

    and give thanks to the Lord.

20 This is the gate of the Lord;

    the righteous shall enter through it.

21 I thank you that you have answered me

    and have become my salvation.

22 The stone that the builders rejected

    has become the cornerstone.

23This is the Lord’s doing;

    it is marvelous in our eyes.

24This is the day that the Lord has made;

    let us rejoice and be glad in it.

25Save us, we pray, O Lord!

    O Lord, we pray, give us success!

26 Blessed is he who comes in the name of theLord!

    We bless you from the house of the Lord.

27The Lord is God,

    and he has made his light to shine upon us.

    Bind the festal sacrifice with cords,

    up to the horns of the altar!

28 You are my God, and I will give thanks to you;

    you are my God; I will extol you.

29 Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good;

    for his steadfast love endures forever!

Labor Day: A Celebration of Life, Not Work

Labor and Birth

The birth of my son in close proximity to Labor Day has led me to reflect some on the value of life as it relates to work, effort, and productivity. 

Pregnancy and childbirth come to mind as particularly interesting examples. My wife, Alyssa, definitely worked hard over the last nine months to facilitate the growth of a human being from nothing (or as she puts it, putting some goo together to make a person). I saw her practice humility, steadfastness, and endurance in the midst of tiredness, fatigue, frustration, and impatience. I saw her industriousness as she learned about how best to care for a fetus through her diet, how to prepare for birth and motherhood, and how to challenge her husband to love, serve, and provide better.

Alyssa also worked diligently in the hours prior to Levi's worldly debut. I could see the strain that each contraction during active labor took on her body and her nerves. I saw her fatigue from hunger while she was restricted from eating. I saw the agony of enduring physical and emotional pain for an uncertain outcome in an intimidating hospital environment. And I saw the effort and pain it took to push out a human boy into the outside world.

In short, my wife worked hard to birth this baby. 

Birthdays to Celebrate Life

But next year on August 29th, and every year after while God allows, when we celebrate Levi's birthday we will not celebrate my wife's industry. We will not eat cake that says 'Way to Conquer Childbirth, Alyssa!' Perhaps we'll reflect on it or remember it, but we will be far more preoccupied with celebrating Levi himself. Not because he did something worth celebrating, but because his life is worth celebrating. 

Levi is beautiful. It's so fun to watch him and listen to him adjust to earthly space and struggle with breathing air and having hands that don't just float. Feeling his warmth is incredible. Alyssa and I love Levi. He hasn't done anything to earn our love. He has the same squished potato face as every other baby. His role in his birth was minimal, mostly reactive. He will only cost our family money for many years. He can't yet help with the chores. At this point he can't even hold his own in conversation. There's no telling what kind of person he will be or how long he'll be on this earth. 

Why do we love him? Why is birth worth celebrating? 

We love him because he's a person. He's fearfully and wonderfully made and we experienced but a glimpse of it. As hard as Alyssa worked during pregnancy, she actually contributed very little to the actual creation of the baby. Yes, she provided a physical space to host him. Yes, she shared nutrients and blood with him. But no, she did not assemble his nervous system by hand. No, she did not pick his temperament and program it into his soul. She did not carve his visage or tune his ear canal. She did not actually create Levi out of nothing. 

The fact of Levi's creation offers much insight into why we celebrate his birth instead of Alyssa's birthing. Levi is a living human being with personality that we've noticed for months. He's alive. He is a life. And life is worth celebrating. By some small probability, a life was formed nine months ago. Out of pretty base material, too. Practically nothing (that's what I contributed to his birth). 

And on this Labor Day (which was not, to the dismay of cosmic irony, the day Alyssa went into labor) I want to reflect on the value of life for life's sake, not for the sake of its measurable worth. 

God's Love for the Unworthy

I've spent most of my life finding my worth in what I do, and I have measured my value in my achievements. I felt valuable as a child because people told me I was smart, I got good marks in school, and I believed I was worthy of a great life. I have felt deep depression at times in my life when I felt I was not worthy enough of the excellence ascribed to me by others and myself. I have felt the oppression of ennui in the midst of unproductivity and lack of accomplishment and a lack of feeling important or valuable because I wasn't doing anything important or valuable. 

Fortunately, God met me in my unwillingness to value my life for what it is. God loves me not for what I've done; in fact, He's quite adamant that it's in spite of it. My pursuit of worth and ambition led me to reject life's intrinsic value and place a conditional, utilitarian value upon it. It was selfish sin like this that showed my choice of death over life. But God showed that His love is not merit based, or even preferences based--He loves me in spite of my misdeeds. He loves me so much He sent His son Jesus to die on behalf of people like me, people who don't value the life he created, who want to outdo do Him, or do without Him. God's goodness is so deep he would bear the death I deserved to give me true life and to call me to live a life of obedience to that which is good and not that which is self-serving. Jesus is real life--love in human form. Sacrifice for the unworthy is the ultimate expression of love--valuing life at the expense of your own comfort. Jesus's sacrifice was not worthless, but effectual in paying the penalty for sin and restoring life to the lifeless. Sacrifice should therefore be for the advancement of life, not for the show of martyrdom or self-righteousness. Which brings me back to baby and Labor Day.  

Love of Life

My wife and I are more than happy to 'sacrifice' for Levi (see above for how Alyssa has sacrificed). We've already lost plenty of sleep, and will lose plenty more. He's already incredibly expensive and will only ever incur more costs. He may not respect me or like me or be the kind of man I want him to be (likely a future blog post). But I will love him and will give what I have to do so. I will sacrifice many comforts and conveniences for his sake. 

And thus I hope to approach my career. I don't want to work for the sake of accomplishment (e.g., financial success, recognition of merit or creativity). And I don't want to work for the sake of sacrifice (hence why I left teaching). I want to celebrate life instead of celebrating work. As co-creators, I do value and appreciate much of the fruits of people's labor, and I'm so glad for the rest we get from Labor Day to celebrate the effort that goes into keeping us alive and interesting, but I want to remember to place work in perspective. Levi doesn't receive love on the basis of his work or the fruit of his efforts, and neither do I. God loves me because I am a life, because I am His creation, because I bear the image of a creator who is life and loves life, who is love and lives love out. I'm so thankful for Alyssa, who loves us both even though we have done nothing but ask of her life. But she gives so freely because she loves so greatly. And she loves much because she, too, is much loved. In marriage and in parenthood I've noticed that increasing the number of people who need my love does not diminish the quality of the love I give each person, but instead increases my capacity to love and reduces the selfish, sinful parts of me (often by exposing them painfully, first). 

In short, today I celebrate life for life's sake, not for the sake of what life produces.