What was the Best Gift You’ve Given?

As we are buried in 6" of snow here in Burnsville, I am starting to get in the Christmas spirit. A week ago, I sat out in front of the Microcenter store for 45 minutes on a cold, Back Friday morning, getting a gift for one of my children. With this, I am thinking about the whole idea of gifts, and I kicked around the idea of the best gift that has been given. So I will ask those of you who visit my Blog – what was the best gift that you have given?

This topic came up when my friends and I were talking about an appropriate response for a really good gift – what is more important: to receive a "thank you", or to see the Recipient truly enjoying the gift as much as you hoped.

Isn't this an easy one? Of course, we expect our children to have the good manners enough to say "thank you". But isn't it much more important to see them actually enjoy the gift, and take real pleasure in using the gift. When I was growing up, there are a few gifts that bring back special memories. The time I woke up early and found a toy baseball player. It had a stand to hold the baseball, and if you hit his head, he swung and popped the baseball. I was sitting there for an hour, playing with this toy, while the rest of my family was sleeping. It was great and a pure moment of joy for me.

Another favorite Christmas gift my family received was an early Apple computer. The computer was connected to our television, and so the whole family played a murder mystery game called "Cranston Manor", with everyone shouting out clues we saw and things we should try. And then my brothers and I played a game called Olympic Decathlon. This crazy game had you pound the keyboard arrows to move the Olympic runner – so the faster you pounded the keys, the faster your athlete went. We spent many hours in front of that computer, and it left me with many happy memories from that time in my life. We also went through many keyboards from playing the Decathlon game!

I don't even remember if I told my father "thank you" for those gifts. But I know he saw the happiness his gifts brought to us. And I am sure that was more important to him – to see his gift received with joy. Which brings me to the point of this post – what does God want from us in response to His Gift of salvation through Jesus' death on the Cross? Jesus' sacrifice in our place is the Best Gift given to humanity, and so it is an important question - Does God expect us to just say "thanks", and then not do anything with this Gift? Yes, saying "thank you" is important, but it can't be nearly as important as having an appreciation of this Gift? Perhaps even a life changing appreciation.

So my take away application is this – what should our response be to God's Gift of His Son? How should we should we show our acceptance and appreciation of this Gift? As we go through this Christmas 2010 season, I hope this post helps you in thinking of ways that we can show our heavenly Father our true gratitude. In Christ, /s/Tom