Who gives away anything for free, these days?

 Happy Christmas! A free gift for you…

Have you ever had your suspicions raised when someone is giving out things for free?

Why are they doing that? What’s “the catch”? Is there a hidden motive, or an annoying group or newsletter to sign up to?

There’s a great Aussie saying that “there is no such thing as a free lunch” --- everything has a cost to someone, somewhere, sooner or later.

Christmas gifts are costly – time, effort, thought and risk. What if the person doesn’t like it?

It’s easier these days to return gifts, or - to openly declare on social media what you want or do not want, and of course, money or gift cards remove a lot of the risk of giving.

What is the cost of Christmas lunch or dinner? Not just the food, but the preparation and the buying of ingredients, the management of time, household members and the invitations to guests who may or may not come. And the risk of relationships.

Christmas is a time when all of us need to prepare our hearts and minds to give gifts. Not gifts purchased or made, but much bigger than that. Gifts of forgiveness, grace, mercy and love to the undeserving of our own families and lives. Gifts that cannot be seen, or counted, or understood except with the heart.

A free gift that you give to yourself is to let go of hurt and free your heart and mind from anger and bitterness.

A free gift that you give another is to let them be the imperfect human that they are, without trying to make them into what you had hoped they might be.

On that first Christmas, the gift of the baby Jesus was to show imperfect humanity that they could come just as they were – poor shepherds, unmarried mother, confused father, and searching wise men.

The gift of Christmas is freely given, and we remember that we too have cost others time, money, patience, care, worry and troubles over the years of our lives.

When we receive freely given gifts, our natural urge is to want to do something to ‘pay’, but what about just accepting the gift, and saying “thank you”? Open your heart to ‘undeserved’ and unexpected gifts – time, compliments, free fruit, hugs, or other joys.

The point of God sending Jesus is that no-one is ever good enough, no-one is worthy: it is just pure love, mercy, and grace for humanity. That is the gift of Christmas.

That's My Soul - a reflection, and a poem

I first came across this poem (not in Larson, but another prophetic work) in the 1980s as a teen searching for how the Gospels and New Testament relate to what I saw and felt in church each Sunday, and in my professing-Christian home.  Thankfully, God was real to me back then, despite what I experienced, and God’s love has carried me through many searching times.

His mercy and grace are what that I pray desperately to pass on to others.

Now, I have better skills and can sit with others in their pain, sorrow, loss and questions.

And, this poem ‘found me’ again, as I want to bring Jesus to a post-post-Christian world: to those who have put their souls out there only to find they are mocked, abused, used and discarded when they don’t measure up, don’t have any money left, no longer have sex appeal, or are just not on trend any more. 

How will others experience God in me, through me?  How will I care for them? (souls = persons – as Martin Buber redefines: I-thou, not I-it)

“Through us, God spreads the knowledge of Christ

everywhere like perfume”.

2 Corinthians 2:14b (NIrV)

 

THAT’S MY SOUL by Ernest L. Stech

That’s my soul lying there.

 

You don’t know what a soul is?

You think it’s some kind of ghostly sheetlike thing

   you can see through and it floats in the air?

That’s my soul lying there.

 

Remember when my hand shook because I was nervous in the group?

Remember the night I goofed and argued too much

  and got mad and couldn’t get out of the whole mess?

I was putting my soul on the line.

 

Another time I said that someone once told me

  something about herself that she didn’t have to.

I said that she told me something that could have hurt her.

And I guess I was asking you to do the same.

I was asking you to let me know you.

That’s part of my soul, too!

 

When I told you that my mother didn’t love my dad and I knew it as a kid,’

When I said that my eyes water when I get hurt

  even though I am thirty-four and too much a man to cry,

I was putting my soul out there in the space between you and me.

Yeah, that’s my soul lying there.

 

I’ve never met God.

I mean I’ve never met that old man who sits on a

  cloud with a crown and a staff and knows everything

  and is everything and controls everything.

But I’ve met you.

 

Is that God in your face?

Is that God in your soul lying there?

 

Well, that’s my soul lying there.

I’ll let you pick it up.

That’s why I put it there.

 

I’ll bruise and turn rancid like an old banana if

  you want to manhandle it.

It’ll go away if you want to ignore it.

 

But if you want to put your soul there beside it,

  there may be love.

There may even be God.

(reproduced in Bruce Larson ‘No Longer Strangers’ Key Word Books 1971)