God's love is the perfect Christmas gift

It's gray and drizzly out my window. One of those “dreary beauty” days. Christmas on the calendar is over — but today we have a belated celebration with family in Spokane. So gifts are still current news.

This morning — sitting with the tree and window lights — watching the wet world appear as the sky announced itself — I began thinking about Christmas gifts and how they tell a story of each giver and receiver.

There's a wonderful line in a poem by Emerson, “Nature never rhymes her children, nor makes two men alike.” And so each gift given and received speaks to that particular person. Sometimes there is a “list” — which my teen grandson thinks is a waste. The whole idea he says is to give the person what YOU want to give.

My husband Terry said he “needed nothing.” But I know he likes our daughter's chocolate mocha truffles, so I asked her to make a batch. I also know he is — as a winter project — restoring a 1968 Honda Trail 90 for someone. For that he needs the garage warm. I found him a Big Buddy Heater after consulting his friend.

I'm not interested in anything mocha. I would not be excited about a garage heater. But I was happy to get from him a new box of good pens for my journaling. And I valued my brother's gift of a book with collected writings about birds.

Terry would have cared nothing for these. I'm sure as we all think over what we gift others and why, it has to do with each person's uniqueness. And our understanding of them, and what they would like. Even if there are things out of reach, the desire is there to give good gifts. To find something “just right.”

“Nature never rhymes her children” — what a brilliant expression. And so one likes this, and another that. One can do this, but not that. One has this to give, but forget that. The blandness of life were we all the same.

Believing in a Creator, I attribute the no rhyme individuality to God's design. No set of fingerprints alike, no faces, no voices. Each with our own personality and habits and talents and thoughts, our likes and dislikes.

Yet leaving one year for the next — as we are about to do — I am reminded that while God, giver of “every good thing given and every perfect gift,” delights in being the ultimate gift giver in my nobody-else-like-me life, there are some things year after year I need the same as others. Most of them unwrappable.

I could make a list — only God is way ahead of me. I'm sure to leave something out which is why there is no list — but rather what He understands about me. And what He wants me to understand about Him.

No matter the year — no matter the gift selection — the one gift I most need and want is God.