Christmas is just a week away. Thanks for carving out time to join me here on this “Advent Adventure.”
We arrived in Advanced Base at the beginning of December, and Christmas was around the corner. I wanted to have some little gift ready for Linda. I found a fairly flat piece of bark, and I used some leftover twine and glue to write out in script the name of our new abode, “Lark’s Nest.” We hung our sign at the top of the path leading to our champa. For her part, Linda gave me a big chunk of pitch pine, a perfect fire-starter on damp mornings.
Other gifts came in even nicer forms. The staff finally located and butchered the runaway bull, and Linda and I spent a day processing our share of the meat, drying some and canning other pieces in Mason jars. And we ate anything leftover including two large hamburgers on fresh homemade rolls! Could anything taste better?
And one gift was not so nice. On Christmas morning, I noticed two little bumps on my right wrist. I wasn’t worried. There were plenty of bugs around and I assumed it was merely a mosquito bite. But by the next morning, I was covered with a rash. Cheching began with the sap of a plant that could be anything from a small sapling to a tree 3’ in diameter with its top hidden in the forest canopy of leaves far above our heads. The rash was similar to a case of poison ivy, only instead of staying in one place, cheching spread head to toe systemically. The itching was furious, and the deep scars I got from that episode lasted over six months.
There is so much we don’t know about Jesus. We have no record of what gifts he made for his mother or father. We don’t know if he ever got sick. We don’t even know what he looked like. Isaiah 52 tells us that “there was nothing in his appearance to attract us to him.” Yet the four gospel writers recorded all the important details: they speak of his patience, his forgiveness, his mercy.
When you give gifts this Christmas, what will people remember about you? Will they remember the gift or the giver?
