Only 353 days left before the next Christmas…better start thinking now as to what gifts will you bring to the King!
Hello, this is Pastor Mark and Epiphany – January 6 – marks the last of the 12 Days of Christmas so that in the Church calendar it is officially over.
Now that Christmas is over, I imagine most of us have started and maybe a few have completed putting Christmas up until the appropriate time to bring it out again later this year.
Scholars will reference that the Wise Men who brought gifts from afar came when Jesus was a child, and not a baby. Note in Matthew 2:11, “On coming to the house, they saw the child with his mother Mary and they bowed down and worshiped him.” They came to a house – not a manager. They saw a child – not a baby. They saw Mary – not Joseph. But we may be trying to read too much into this story. The emphasis is that the first Gentiles (non-Jew) to worship Jesus were these Wise Men. “…then they opened their treasures and presented him with gifts of gold and incense and myrrh.”
Now that Christmas giving is past (for 353 days) you may not want to be thinking about it yet, but what gift(s) will you bring to the King in 2022?
One of the most expensive gifts I can find is a perfect diamond. If it has the four C’s of cut, clarity, color and carat weight it can be as high a value of nearly $40,000 per gram. So, a 5 carat would be about $350,000. Too much?
What about the clothes of an Emperor? It takes 10,000 sea snails that are only found in the Mediterranean Sea to make one gram of a certain dye powder to produce just the right amount of purple color the old-fashioned way at about $4000 per gram. You do the math and the Emperor’s coat might be hundreds of thousands of dollars to make. I like purple and I’m glad we have found ways to make it more inexpensively.
Still too much? Why not bring a perfume. “Absolute Vetiver inspired by 1872” is a pure one and it comes from Clive Christian. Why not bring a perfume that has the name Christian in it to the King of Kings? It is only about $176.00 a gram and a 20 oz. jar is only $3,520.
But wait, is it about the amount I can afford to give? Will the glitter and cost bring oohs and aahs from the Savior? No, it is not about what I buy or how much I spend. What Jesus would want from me is to give my life to Him. That gift is priceless. We are more valuable to him then all the gold and incense and myrrh.
Happy New Year and this year, give yourself to the King.
See you in Church!
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