The following post was written by East-West’s Executive Vice President of Field Ministries.
I was in fourth grade when Christmas Eve arrived in 1961. In our family, we opened our gifts on Christmas Eve. That year I had a special gift under our tree from my Aunt Viola. Aunt Viola was my favorite aunt and she loved me a lot. Whether it was true or not, I believed that she was rich (the main evidence for belief about her vast wealth was that she had a quart jar completely full of quarters on her dresser).
The gift in question was about the size of a shoe box and it was wonderfully heavy. When you rocked it back and forth it made a most satisfying clunk when the treasure inside hit the end of the box. I held it and rocked it often. With great restraint, I refrained from opening it and re-taping it.
My mind was running wild with possibilities. A very cool metal truck or a very cool tool or a very cool hatchet or a very cool pair of binoculars or a very cool toy were all candidates. Then again, maybe it was an object so cool and so wonderful that I had not even thought of it yet.
Maybe it was the boy’s gift of a lifetime!
I held the gift, shook the gift, and speculated on the content of the gift for a full three weeks. When Christmas Eve finally arrived, I saved the opening of this special object to the very last. The anticipation was too sweet to cut short.
Finally, heart racing and palms sweating, I opened this treasure. It was going to be something great. I was going to love Aunt Viola even more than I already did.
To this day—more than 55 years later—that gift remains as one of the premier disappointments of my life. A fourth grade boy, whose entire footwear consists of one pair of tennis shoes and one pair of boots, does not have much use for a battery-operated shoe polisher.
The first Christmas Gift ever given was no disappointment. He was a joy. He was light. He was Savior. He was beautiful. He was beyond amazing. He was God. He still is.
Whether you are a fourth-grade American boy or an 89-year-old Nepali woman, The Gift never disappoints.
It’s not too late for you to give the greatest gift—the gospel—to the unreached this Christmas. Click here to shop our Unwrap Hope gift catalog.