Gifts

I have no gift to bring...
That's fit to give a king...
~Little Drummer Boy

I've been running reflections on Advent and gifts with my girls. The 9th and 10th graders hear the story of The Littlest Angel by Charles Tazewell...which is a fantastic little story that parallels the Little Drummer Boy in a lot of ways.

The Littlest Angel doesn't "fit in" in heaven. He can't quite figure out how to be angelic and be a little boy at the same time. He makes a request for a box that he left at home under his bed, and when it arrives in heaven, he is suddenly a model citizen.

When the time comes for Jesus to be born, all the angels are asked to prepare gifts for the Savior. The Littlest Angel is stumped...but eventually lays the rough, scratched up, wooden box among all the other gifts:

And what was his gift to the Blessed Infant? Well, there was a butterfly with golden wings, captured one bright summer day on the high hills above Jerusalem, and a sky blue egg from a bird's nest in the olive tree that stood to shade his mother's kitchen door. yes, and two white stones, found on a muddy river bank, where he and his friends had played like small brown beavers, and, at the bottom of the box, a limp, tooth-marked leather strap, once worn as a collar by his mongrel dog, who had died as he had lived, in absolute love and infinite devotion.

And the Voice of God spoke, saying, "Of all the gifts of all the angels, I find that this small box pleases Me most. Its contents are of the Earth and of men, and My Son is born to be King of both. These are the things My Son, too, will know and love and cherish and then, regretfully, will leave behind Him when His task is done. I accept this gift in the Name of the Child, Jesus, born of Mary this night in Bethlehem."

God wants nothing more from us than the most precious parts of ourselves. What we love most, God loves most. The very best way to serve God, to give back to God, is to offer that which connects with us at the deepest level. That which brings us joy brings God the most joy.

We want to make it so complicated, so difficult, so hard...so that we can more easily throw up our hands and say, "It's impossible. I can never be perfect, I can never please God, I don't know what God wants from me." But in the end, it's simple. God gives each of us a unique set of gifts to offer our world...and all God asks of us in return is that we share these gifts, that we live into them to the best of our abilities.

Simple, right?