I am very upset with my husband right now. After not doing any of the Christmas shopping, he has not helped me to wrap a single gift. They’re all there, under the tree, beautifully wrapped. By me.
This is the very same husband who just walked by and picked up my shoes on his way to the closet. For the third time today. He has put my shoes away three times today. But I have refused this loving gesture as I was busy fuming over my piles of wrapping paper and scissors and tape.
How many blessings do we refuse?
In this season of giving, we have a problem with receiving. If we do not receive well, we should question our motives for giving.
My mother and I count down the dark days of December, waiting for December 21st when we can lay the day to rest and begin to enjoy more sunshine. I dread the darkness. It’s hard to motivate, hard to get out of bed, hard to feel productive. Or is it hard to feel valued?
Our culture is increasingly at odds with God’s agenda. As I struggle through these dark winter months, fighting my urge to rest, I grumpily soldier on and try to accomplish the tasks of the day: quiet time, work out, breakfast (healthy, of course), self-care, work, homemade dinner, a little volunteer work, and maybe some time with my shoe-stashing husband. It’s not that hard when the sun shines, beckoning us to begin our day. But when we have just nine and a have hours of sun, it’s a fight.
Not even ten hours of daylight. In our gardens, during these dark days our plants tend to their roots. The plant rests, but its roots grow so that in the spring – when there is sun – the plant is strong and ready to wow us with flowers and fruits and then new growth. Matthew 22 says that man is not made for the Sabbath. Sabbath was made for man. God gave us rest. It is up to us to receive it. These dark days of December are a great gift to us. They are days of rest when we, ironically, are consumed by giving. In December, we take on the mantle of King David, building a temple to God that is not ours to build. He did not ask us to celebrate the birth of His son by running ragged to prove how much we love each other.
Instead, He gave us rest.
It is no accident that we fight our way out of the covers when the sun is not yet up. It is no accident that we drag ourselves home from work, Act 1 of our day, with the highest hopes that our family would gather quietly together around to find rest together. This is the time set aside for us to nourish our roots so we may be fruitful when that time comes.
But we fight it. We power through to hang the holly and get the gifts and go to church and hit the parties and cook the meals and bake the cookies and call it joy. Nobody wants to admit that what we call joy is not. It is depletion – our bank accounts AND our souls. We begin this season with a promise to connect with God. THIS time. THIS Advent will be meaningful. We look for Him as we run this race and sometimes we recognize Him as we run by and we’re so excited that we caught a glimpse, but He is actually waiting there for us. If we would have looked, we would have seen that he held out a glass of water. He has been here the whole time, hoping that we would rest with Him. Hoping we would recharge. Hoping we would receive this gift of rest and be ready to bear fruit when the sun comes out again.
We have a hard time receiving. It’s not just rest in a season that robs us of it when we need it most. It’s so many good things in life. We don’t receive kind gestures (I probably owe my husband an apology). We don’t receive kind words. We don’t receive our talents. We really struggle to receive love. It’s as though we don’t feel like we deserve the good that God has. We reject it and somehow mistake that rejection for humility. But the reality is, that when we don’t receive blessings, we are rejecting God. He gives us these things so that we can better serve Him and so that His will may come, things that Christians have always sought. Yet in our seeking, we continue to do it our way. We shop ourselves into a debt-fueled stupor to prove we love our fellow man. We hide our talents behind the lie that we’re not worthy because someone else may be better. We walk away from heart-felt thank you’s because we really don’t think it mattered. We don’t show up because we don’t believe that we matter. We punish ourselves for our shortcomings that Jesus died to forgive. We isolate ourselves in shame, when Jesus died to take that away. We are still in the desert, building a golden calf. We have refused God’s gifts simply because we’ve been convinced that we don’t deserve them, that we have to be better. Somehow, we believe that dragging ourselves out of bed before the sun so that we can start quiet time and work-out time and healthy eating time and job time and family time and volunteer time is what makes us worthy.
But our worth is a gift. We were born as beloved children of an all-powerful God, just as our children were born beloved by us. It is simply up to us to receive. When we receive love – whether from God or our own families – we aren’t ashamed. We aren’t meaningless. We MATTER.
It is a season of giving, but if we are to truly give well, we must also learn to receive well.