That is a question that I remember my parents and grandparents asking me each year in early December. Eventually Santa Claus asked me the same question while I sat on his knee in a department store in my home town. This same process was repeated for several years during my early childhood. You may identify with this memory in your own life.
Do you remember any of the things your wanted and thought you couldn't live without those things? Back then, Sears and Roebuck published a Christmas catalogue that helped every child have their minds filled with possibilities as they looked from page to page at the wonderful toys that would make Christmas perfect.
Some children made lists that seemed to be endless of ideas gained from that catalogue. But, depending on the economic status of the parents, there often came a conversation between parents and child that placed a limit on our endless lists. I have one memory of those conversations that is still vivid. The conversation consisted of one simple instruction - you must narrow your list down to just one thing this year. Narrowing a list from fifteen or twenty items to just one was a hard and painful task.
I was too young to truly understand why this was necessary. As an adult, I understand completely what my parents and countless others faced or will face once or maybe often in life. In our family that Christmas, money was scarce and priorities had to be set for each member of the family including children.
These memories have caused me to think this year about what I really want for Christmas. I am putting two restriction to my list - first, any item placed on the list cannot have a monetary cost, and second, any item placed on the list must have a benefit not only for me but for others also. This list is not built from a Christmas catalogue full of toys. Rather, it is built more from reading the Bible and watching the news.
The first item on my list is HOPE. This is not a hope for a new bicycle or a new car. This is a hope that pulls a person from despair to a position of moving forward. It is a hope that restores purpose and meaning to life. It is a hope that can turn the darkness of a moment or of an extended period of time to a period of light that enables a person to believe in a future.
This fall I have been blessed to lead a Bible study at our church on Wednesday nights. It was based on various Biblical characters and how they reacted when God confronted their lives with challenges that might change their location, their profession, or their security. I used Jeremiah 29:11 as a theme verse for our study.
"For I know the plans I have for you, declares the
Lord, plans for welfare and not for evil, to give
you a future and a hope."
If you read this verse in its context in Jeremiah, you will find that God instructed Jeremiah to write a letter to the Israelites who were in exile in Babylon following Babylon's defeat of Israel and the destruction of the temple and of Jerusalem. God wanted them to know that their destiny was not to be forever exiles. Hope extends beyond the present moment and can take us into another year, decade, or even century. God was telling them to hold on to the hope of restoration that He was extending to them, but it would take seventy years for it to come to fruition.
So today in a world that is broken, in disarray, and often filled with fear, I want HOPE to pervade my life, my family, my friends, my neighbors, and the many people who populate this planet and whose names i do not know. I pray that it is not the shallow hope of the fulfillment of selfish desires, but rather that it is the HOPE that only comes from God that restores and enables people to move forward embracing a future that is filled with purpose and meaning.
Certainly there are many things that can go on such a list and over the next few weeks I will share the expansion of my list. But there must be a beginning place. Without HOPE it would be easy to overlook or miss the other great gifts that God wants to give to each of us this Christmas.
Have a great week as you begin making your own list.
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