There are gifts… and then there are gifts. Our family stopped giving gifts at Christmas more than twenty-five years ago, for reasons I won’t get into here. But there are precious gifts given by friends and loved ones that are not tied to any particular date in the year.

A few months ago, I shared with you a gift my husband gave me for no special reason. I refer to the composite picture he made of my father and me, at roughly the same age, in the same picture, as if we’d both been photographed at the same time. It cost him nothing but his time, but to me it was a treasure from his heart to mine.

Imagination

Almost five years ago, a friend handed me an open hymnbook and said, “I’d like you and Ian to sing this song as a duet, next time I’m leading the worship team.” That gave us two weeks to practice. We had never sung together before, and didn’t even know we could! With much trepidation, we did as our friend asked. She didn’t know her simple request would prove to be a valuable gift to us. It was the first of many times we sang together.

That summer, another friend set up a recording studio in his office, and he told us he wanted to record us singing duets. To me, he said, “One day you won’t be around any more, and your kids will love being able to hear you sing.” He was only joking. He couldn’t have known that only a year and a half later, Ian would be gone. Today I played the video I’ve posted below, and one of my sons came into the living room and said, “Oh! I knew I recognized that voice!”  

I will always be grateful to both of my friends – the one who encouraged us to praise the Lord together through song, and the one who recorded us singing. Never underestimate the nudge toward doing something for someone, or saying something positive and uplifting, because it could be the Lord prompting you. Little things can mean so much to others, as we give to them.  

Three years ago, another friend gave me a gift, albeit unwittingly. She happened to mention something she and her husband had read in their devotions that morning. Ian and I had not been having devotions in the mornings, since he got up much earlier than I did, to go to work. But my friend’s comment got me thinking of what we were missing, and I approached Ian about it. “If I got up with you in the mornings, could we read from one of these two books and pray together before you leave for work?” It was as if Ian had been just waiting for me to ask. We began the next morning.

The two books were Morning and Evening, by Charles Spurgeon, and My Utmost for His Highest, by Oswald Chambers.

We had been reading from one or the other of them for barely three months when Ian passed away unexpectedly one Sunday morning. In the difficult days and months that followed, I continued reading from both books every morning. It was that small practice, begun such a short time before Ian’s death, that carried me through. A small gift from a friend who didn’t even know she was giving me one.

As I write this, Christmas Day is drawing to a close for another year. Regardless of how you celebrate – or don’t celebrate – this is the time of year when we think of the greatest of all gifts came to us. The day our Almighty and Holy God – King of kings and Lord of lords – came to earth to inhabit a human body, to live and experience and suffer as we do, and face temptation as we do, yet without sin. He was fully God, and fully man, and came to die on that cross in our place, to free from the penalty of sin all those who will receive Him as their Saviour and Lord. And yet, He came as a tiny, helpless baby. Anyone who did not understand the scriptures at the time would never have believed that little baby would grow up to be the Redeemer of mankind.

This same God works in us, in what often seem like small ways, to work out His purposes through us. Most of the time we don’t even know it is God leading us. But if we act on those thoughts and promptings, we can look back and see how He has led us even in the small ways.

Gifts. They come in all sizes, and costs. But sometimes the best gifts of all are the ones given by those who have no idea they are giving you anything.