The gift
I awoke the other morning and looked out my bedroom window at the beautiful sunrise. My mind drifted. I thought about how really fortunate I am. Lifting one foot from the past, I could now step in the future on much firmer ground with both feet. For years I had been the one who everyone tried to make feel better about their situation. Today, I was in a different place.
Christmas is often a very difficult time for people. The pressure of finding the perfect gift is even worse when there is very little money to spend on any gifts, much less the perfect one. I have been in those shoes before. One time, I took what little money I had to spend on Christmas and I headed to the local craft store. I purchased a glue gun and a few other small items. I then headed to one of those inexpensive stores where you can find all kinds of treasures for a dollar. I gathered more items here that were within my limited budget.
With my son’s help I went to work on the project. He gathered sticks and twigs from the backyard. Then I had him help me glue things together. We let the glue dry. A few days later we glued the little manger people inside our little version of the Christmas manger. As everyone handed us their gifts, I felt real bad that all I could give them was this little token.
His parents emigrated from what is now Northern Ireland two years before he was born. They probably landed in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They would head south to find a better life. But his father died three weeks before he was born. His Mom was traveling back from the funeral, somewhere between the North and South Carolina border, when he was born.
He was a militia courier in the Revolutionary War at the age of thirteen years old. He had two older brothers. The eldest of his brothers, Hugh, died of heat exhaustion in the Battle of Stono Ferry. His other older brother, Robert, and he were captured by the British and held in captivity. They were nearly starved to death.
Way back a long, long time ago, God created this thing we call earth and all that roamed on it. On the sixth day of this process, God created man. God must have had such high hopes for man because he placed him in this paradise that was called Eden. This Garden had everything man needed to live a happy life. When man became lonely, God even solved that problem by creating him a mate. He gave man everything he needed and He basically only had one rule: don’t eat from only one particular tree that was in the Garden. Man could choose from any other tree or any other plant, just not that one.
Man made his very first bad choice in the Garden. He decided to eat the fruit of the tree he was told not to eat from by God Himself. God was not very happy about this. Man’s actions had now caused the first break in the perfect relationship he had with God. Here man learned his first vocabulary word: sin. Sin – an action we do that separates us from God. God banished man from this perfect paradise. Man would also, now, have the curse of death hanging over him.
Our little soldier boy and his brother did not enjoy their captivity. One day an officer in the British army came in and ordered him to clean his, the officer’s, boots. He refused. The officer would slash him with his sword. This would leave a scar on his left hand and his head.
Robert, his brother, would contract smallpox. His mother would secure her two sons’ releases, but Robert would die a few days after this. Now his Mom and he were the only ones left in their little family.
Leaving paradise also meant that man was also doomed to a life of hard work. He would have to till his own soil and plant his own plants. He would have to find his own food and protect himself from his new environment. And at the end of all this toil all he would have to show for it was death. There doesn’t sound like much hope there, does it?
Our young soldier’s Mom would sign up to be a nurse in the war. She would get cholera and die a short time later. She was buried in an unmarked grave. At the age of fourteen years old, Andrew Jackson was now an orphan. He would always blame the British.
Even at the age of fourteen years old, Andrew Jackson proved quite the American. Even though he was the son of two immigrants, who died at very young ages, he never stopped being a true American patriot. In the War of 1812, when the British again came after us with war, Jackson was one of the great heroes of that war. Countless General Jackson statues dot our country today. Most show him riding high on his horse, proud of his triumph over the British in the Battle of New Orleans. By mistreating a little boy, who was a very proud soldier, the British would create a general who would grow up to defeat them. Andrew Jackson, in a way, extended the gift of our freedoms that we often take for granted today. This is a gift that cost us nothing, but with which Andrew Jackson gave freely to defend for us.
God also didn’t leave man hanging without hope. He loved us so much that he also had a victory plan over our death. His relief came in the form of sending His own Son as our replacement for the things we did to separate ourselves from Him. Now even death cannot separate man and God. We only need to accept this gift. The cost? Nothing. That’s right, all we have to do is accept this free gift, just like the gift someone gives us at Christmas time that we cannot afford to repay.
I’ll be real honest with you, I can’t really remember the gifts I received the year I gave everyone my little manger scene, but every year my Mom pulls out my little manger at Christmas time for all to see. Maybe it really isn’t so much about how much you spend on Christmas gifts or even if you buy any at all. Maybe it is more about the spirit in which you give and receive them that means the most. You really can’t put a price tag on that.
Prayer: Dear Mighty Father, You know the times I have really struggled. Thanks for teaching me that sometimes receiving a gift, like Your gift of eternal life, takes a more grateful heart than it does presenting the perfect gift because we feel like we need to return the favor. Amen.
