The Gifts of Christmas by Sheila Walsh

Author:Sheila Walsh [Walsh, Sheila]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Devotional;Advent—Prayers and devotions;REL012020;REL012120;REL034020
Publisher: Baker Publishing Group
Published: 2023-09-11T00:00:00+00:00

day fourteen

The Wrapping Paper

God saved you by his grace when you believed. And you can’t take credit for this; it is a gift from God.

Ephesians 2:8

I do not have the gift of wrapping. After I’ve finished wrapping a gift, it often looks as if the dogs wrapped it and then changed their minds and tried again. I even watched an online tutorial on gift wrapping at one point, and it has made no significant impact on my style. Either the paper is too big and I don’t know what to do with what’s left at both ends of my gift so I end up using duct tape to hold the large wads in place, or the paper is too small and I attempt to crush the gift to get it to fit.

My friend Luci Swindoll, however, was the consummate gift wrapper. I still have some of the boxes that her gifts came in because they are so beautiful. She was artistic in every way. Not only were her gifts beautifully wrapped but she would make decorations, little pieces of art to go on top that were as lovely as the gift inside. I’m pretty sure that no one has ever kept whatever I wrapped their gift in.

My greatest wrapping disaster of all time came when I was dating a guy in college for several months and his mom invited me to join them for dinner on Christmas Eve. I bought little gifts for his mom and dad and three sisters. I even included a gift for their dog. The actual wrapping wasn’t catastrophic, but I forgot to label them. As we sat around the fire after dinner, I decided it was time to pass out my gifts. It was only when I looked in the bag that I realized the boxes were identical and there were no names on any of them. I took a deep breath and passed them out. They asked if they could open them there and then or if I wanted them to wait for Christmas Day. With all the sense of a sloth, I told them to go ahead and open them.

His dad got three tubes of lip gloss.

His mom got six golf balls.

His sisters—well . . .

The twelve-year-old got a dog bone.

The seven-year-old got a voucher for a massage.

And the bald baby got hair ribbons.

The dog got a copy of ’Twas the Night before Christmas.

(Okay, to be honest, two of them did receive the correct gifts, but the thought of this made me laugh—sorry! I have to say that they extended grace to me, and they laughed too.)

As a child, I always thought that the best gifts came in large boxes because it looked as if you were getting more. Mum used to say to me, “Some of the most precious gifts come in small packages.” That has never been truer than the greatest gift of Christmas and the wrapping that He came in. When I think of grace, I can’t think of a more perfect picture than Jesus wrapped in swaddling clothes.

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