Finding the Perfect Gift

Ah, December, the month of gift-giving. Family asks me for gift suggestions and I want to be helpful but I really can't come up with much of a list. I want to give thoughtful gifts to family and don't seem to have much of a gift imagination. So do I ask what someone wants and give it to them ruling out any surprise? And if it's a category gift like "sweater" . . . my ideas of style and color don't often turn out to be anything more than a need for the receiver of the gift to return it next month. To just give a check and say . . . "pick out what you would like" doesn't seem to fill out what a personal, thoughtful, loving , meaningful gift is. Anybody else struggle with this? I don't know about you but I am envious of those people who seem to be able to come up with a gift for someone that is "just right!" I'm thankful for a wife that is sooooo much better at this than I am and the family benefits from that blessing.

But this is such an easy segue to think about the Reason or Gift behind our gift giving. Our felt needs are seldom our real needs when it comes to the most important area of our lives. We have no trouble asking for things, wanting to get certain gifts but it can never even occur to us to ask for the most-needed gift. Who needs that? Can we in truth not ask for, or even be aware of, what we need most? I think the answer is "yes." Does the Gift-giver need to work in us to know what we need? Yes. Ever since the Garden, we have been sure we know what we need and we want what we need, we will be unhappy without it and we will even die if we don't get it; i. e., what we want. I mean who could better know what we need than we ourselves?! Indeed, Who?

There is One Who has not only imagined the Perfect Gift, knows what we really need, gift-wrapped and unwrapped the Perfect Gift but still opens our eyes to see the need, the love behind it and the perfection of the Gift and open our arms and hearts to receive Him. Maybe at the heart of it, Christmas is the Perfect Gift finding us!

Now there is a Gift for us to think about and treasure while we seek in stores and online to find gifts for people we love.

Join us in a never-ending season of thinking about the perfect Gift for us; the Gift that keeps on giving us the knowledge that all we really need, all we really want, we have in this Gift . . . the Perfect Gift!

Please also join us in the gift of preparing for and traveling to Asia in January to talk about this Gift with others. Thank you again for joining in this with us by your gifts and prayers.