And it is the great paradox of our history, that when God came, it was not in the way they expected or wanted or prayed for. It was in an infant, a newborn, the essence of weakness and vulnerability, but also the one human reality that universally calls out of everyone who witnesses it, participates in it, love, a love that was not there before. It was a gift I received five times, with the birth of my children, and each time the baby, simply by showing up, created something new—a love in my heart that hadn’t been there before.

John M. Buchanan

December 18, 2011

Excerpt

If you are fortunate, you learned to give early in your life. One of my favorite Christmas memories is about the time I learned of the joy and excitement of giving. I must have been thirteen or fourteen, because I had a paper route and a few dollars in my pocket. My mother took my little brother and me along Christmas shopping to find a pocket watch for my father, the kind that railroaders used, a large pocket watch with a clear face, fastened to a chain and worn in a watch pocket. Men’s vests used to have a small pocket for your pocket watch and maybe still do. It was that watch my father pulled out in church and looked at when he thought the preacher was going on too long and, to my mother’s horror and my delight, would, if the sermon was really long, wind it so that everyone sitting around us could hear. (I’m getting ahead of myself.) My mother took me and my little brother to buy a pocket watch for Dad. Our destination was Seller’s Jewelry Store, the finest in town, at the head of a stairway above the bank. I had never been in Seller’s before. I recall the deep blue carpet on the stairway in the glittering showroom with cases full of jewelry, rings and pins and pearl necklaces and watches, wristwatches and pocket watches of all sizes and prices. Mr. Sellers himself waited on us, a tall, white-haired man in a blue suit. I was impressed that he knew my mother’s name.

Mr. Sellers showed us the pocket watches, and we focused on one. It must have been more expensive than my mother’s budget. She told Mr. Sellers that we would have to think about it, although I now think she staged the whole thing to teach us a lesson. Down the blue carpeted stairway we went, out onto the sidewalk for a conference. “That’s the watch he would want,” she said. “But it is expensive. So let’s buy it together.” Prior to that, my gifts for him were pretty much the same every year: blue work hankies, and a package of Gillette razor blades. This was a whole new level, a pocket watch from Seller’s jewelry store! So I dug in my pocket and contributed a few dollars. My brother, who was six or seven at the time, I think, put in fifty cents. “All right,” she said. “Now we have enough.” And back up the stairs we went and bought the watch. We were thrilled and with great excitement we waited, all three of us, to present it to my father on Christmas morning. It wasn’t the only time, of course, but I do recall it fondly as an occasion when I discovered, or was taught, the joy of giving. The watch continues to be a reality for my younger brother and me. When my father died, my mother put his work pocket watch in a glass dome, and it sat on her book shelf. When she died—and I still don’t know how this happened—my brother ended up with Dad’s watch, which he still has, and I remind him regularly of the simple injustice of it, how over the top his return is on his pathetic investment. He is, to this day, unmoved and has not yet returned the watch.

Full Sermon

https://fourthchurch.org/sermons/2011/121811.html

Link to Substack

https://open.substack.com/pub/holdtothegood/p/the-gift?r=5kfndf&utm_medium=ios&utm_source=post-publish