Making things happen
... with integrity
Monday, December 6, 2004 Volume VI Number 49
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by Ken Kemp |
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ere we are again, smack dab in the season of giving. Pastor Todd prayed it this way: “Lord, help us to remember the reason for the season, even while we’re out there promoting it.” Todd knows - those of us who are in the business of articulating the meaning of the Christmas season can miss it, too. Just like everybody else. |
And somehow, this Christmas, I seem more aware of it than usual. I’m not a very good gift giver. I’m sentimental enough, that’s for sure. But when it comes to thinking through just the right gift, planning ahead, I haven’t got a great track record.
Others have done better. There are those among us who pick up on the hints. They think it through. They know the needs. They anticipate.
High impact gifts are not necessarily the most expensive. In fact, the best come from the heart. They capture something of the depth of affection, and the caring and the appreciation… and they communicate the high value of the relationship. The old cliché fits – it really is the thought that counts.
How often have I found myself in the Mall on Christmas Eve, without a clue of what I might buy for those beloved friends and family on my punch list? I’m stunned by the overwhelming possibilities – the endless displays of options, none of which seem appropriate. It puts me in a stupor, a numb sort of daze as I wander up and down the aisles alone, hoping and praying for inspiration. And the guilt… the guilt over procrastinating until this panicky moment, surrounded by throngs of other procrastinators, picking through the picked over stuff, there where I don’t want to be out of some unwelcome sense of duty, absent the joy and wonder of the beauty of the holy-day… focused on one goal: find a gift, any gift, pay the bill, and get out of this maze of shoving, frenzied shoppers, lined up and smoldering along with me in sulky impatience and head back home to wrap and tag before sun-up. Whew.
Well, there is still time this year – to change my ways.
I’ve already received one of those good gifts - the thoughtful, premeditated kind. I’ll cherish it forever. It was the first one to find a conspicuous place in my new office. It came from Bill.
He gave it to me as we stood together before the people of our home town church – bidding one another a fond farewell. I just preached a sermon, getting myself back into the pastoral Sunday morning routine. I went predictably over-time, revved up over the truth revealed in the text, and enjoying the warm affirmation of the people who actively listened and affirmed my points with smiles and nods as I told stories and explained the passage as best I could. I think I had three or four conclusions, and each time the people thought they could pack up and head home. The sound guys had their finger on the off-switch at the tape machine, thinking it was a wrap. The worship team sat on the edge of the pew, ready to head back to the mikes on stage. The children’s workers looked at their watches in disbelief over in their classrooms. Then I’d start up again with yet another conclusion. They were a forgiving crowd, a stayed with me anyway.
Then Bill got up, and invited Carolyn to stand with me. He said some nice things about the years we spent together ever since that day in our living room when we dreamed of a real church, a real congregation of eager people who would come together to live and grow and pray and reach out with God’s love and grace. It’s been an amazing journey, he said. And indeed it was.
And then he talked about his attempts to find me a farewell gift. Something appropriate, he said. Something that would communicate the essence of a friendship that began one 4th of July weekend over six years ago. Bill said he wandered through the Mall down the hill, poking in and out of shops up and down the promenade, and came up empty handed. Nothing seemed right.
Then he said, back in his office, he looked up on his own shelf. He found it.
One year ago, the Paradise Fire swept through our town taking homes, consuming personal treasures and up-rooting families, and just down the way, taking the lives of two innocent, good people. But out of the ashes, God brought us something we will never forget. The very best in people came to the surface. Scores of men and women volunteered. Money poured in. The task of rebuilding began. Community was restored. And in the giving, people opened their hearts on new levels. Pastor Bill recovered a sense of his own call. He became everything he’d been created to be. Our little church became a beacon-house of God’s love and care.
With the donated money, we rented big eighteen-wheel trucks to carry off the charred refuse. In a stunning twist of events, those trucks were turned away at the gates of the landfill sites. The facilities refused to accept the scorched waste. Our men were nonplussed. At the last minute, there was no other choice. The trucks dumped their blackened load on the church property. There it remained for months.
It became something of a local monument – an odd one to be sure. Bill would go out back and look at the twisted steel, the charred beams and boards, the melted plastic, motorcycles and bicycles and swing-sets and toys that once brought pride and laughter and recreation and now represented loss and tragedy. Volunteers sifted through the ash, looking for anything of value. They found a lot. Some of it returned to a grateful owner. Most of it, discarded.
One day, Bill kicked over a bent and burnt sheet of metal. Underneath, he found what looked at first like a brick – a gray block of concrete the size of two fists one stacked on the other. He looked closer. It was shaped, flat on the bottom and arched on the top. He turned it over. There on the face of it, charred from the heat, was the carving of a cherub – a winged angel – a survivor. Bill stopped and looked and pondered. It was a token with a message – God is in the business of protection and watch-care.
Bill was moved by the find. It prompted him to pray – to thank God for bringing meaning and purpose out of tragedy. He put it in his office to remind him of what God did in the aftermath of the Paradise Fire.
And now, as we stood before the congregation, he handed it to me.
“Ken, I love you, brother,” he said. “This is my gift to you on your last official day here in our church. Remember us when you look at it, and remember the God who brought us each other.”
And then he added one more thing –
“We made it through the fire – together.”
Indeed, we did.
* * * * * * *
It’s Monday morning. You are a leader.
Gifts are meant to be so much more than a perfunctory, superficial routine at Christmastime.
Maybe it’s time, this morning, to begin to think about the people who mean the most to you. Maybe it’s time to start thinking now, not just about what you want to give… but what you want your gift to say.
In my office, you’ll find a charred artifact from some unknown property burned in one of the largest fires in California history. That little brick means so much more than a cherub captured in flight by a sculptor of concrete. For me, it’s jammed packed with meaning.
Like the familiar manger scene. And the star. And the shepherds. And the wise men. And the mother and child.
Gifts packed with meaning.
Let’s give good gifts this year.
You and me.
Like the gifts we’ve been given.
Posted in Valley Center, California
© Copyright Kenneth E. Kemp 2004
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