THE GREATEST OF GIFTS

It was Christmas Eve, and I was staring at a Christmas morning nightmare. You see, each year we go to my sister’s in Cleveland for our Christmas gathering. To lighten our load, we tend to buy our son’s gifts online and have them sent to Cleveland. But when I got to my sister’s house on Christmas Eve, the hand-held computer system that Peter wanted so badly was not there. I was terrified. How could I have been so distracted by work that I had not checked with the company to confirm that the gift had been shipped? Would the stores still be opened so that I could find a replacement to put under the tree?

After a whispered discussion with my wife, Ursula, we decided that she would take Peter off to Christmas Eve service with our relatives and I would go in search of an open store. As I madly tore around a Cleveland suburb, I found that everyone had closed their doors at 7:00 pm. The only stores open were pharmacies and video rental stores. My heart sank. How would I face my son? My only choice was to patch together a Christmas for him that involved buying whatever age-appropriate toys I could find and a season volume of his favorite TV series, “The Simpsons.” It was meager pickings, but what choice did I have?

As I stood in the hotel room wrapping my thrown-together Christmas presents, I dreaded seeing my little family. How would Peter react? Would he burst into tears? The thought of the disappointment on his face was almost too much to bear. How could I have been so careless?

After what seemed like hours, the moment of truth came. Peter and his mother pulled up to the hotel, and I looked into my son’s trusting face and said that I had some very bad news. Without missing a beat, Peter looked at me and said, “My computer didn’t come, did it?” I took a deep breath and quietly said “no.” Peter just looked up at me and said with a comforting smile, “That’s OK, Dad. I know you’ll make it up to me.”

In that moment, I had a clear sense of the depth of God’s grace! I want my faith to be like Peter’s. He could have been angry or deeply hurt that he was not going to get the gratification that he had waited for so long on that Christmas morning. But his faith and trust in his parents was so profound that this did not matter. He knew that we would follow through on our promises. I thought, if only I had the same child-like trust in the promises that Jesus made, how much less tense I would be about the little disappointments in life. My son had given me one of the greatest gifts that I have ever received, and I will never forget it.

— Dennis Wilder

Courtesy of The Church of the Good Shepherd United Methodist