2024 Advent Devotion: Day 17

Tuesday,  December 17

Numbers 16:20-35; Acts 28:23-31 

Each year, our Student Ministry holds Christmas parties for our Middle and High School students. Each year, I offer a choice: do the students want to bring real gifts or gag gifts? Each year, some good-natured student who wants us all to put thought into getting gifts for one another is drowned out by a chorus of shouts for gag gifts. And so each year, I add to my collection of whoopi cushions, fake vomit, toilet paper, and the occasional brick. The trick to a good gag gift is to package it appealingly. You can always tell whose parents remembered the party early enough to put thought into the gift because that student will come with a giant box that could only contain something impressive. Some enthusiastic student grabs the enormous box, and joy turns to frustration and disappointment as the first box reveals another and another and another, until at last a jewelry box with a single tissue is revealed.

I began introducing a wrinkle to the Christmas parties a few years ago. My gift is now not a joke but a free trip to summer camp. Because of that, I have to play the opposite game as everyone else. I do all I can to make the gift undesirable, everything I can to make folks disregard that gift in favor of something else until, at last, someone stumbles upon the prize inside.

Toward the end of Acts, Luke emphasizes Paul’s desire to get to Rome and continue spreading the Gospel to the Gentile world. The journey does not go the way Paul most likely hoped. He finds himself in Rome but is under house arrest. Yet despite that, Paul stayed committed to his mission, and his time under Roman supervision became an opportunity to do what he most desired: share with the city’s people the Good News of Jesus Christ.

The Advent season is a powerful reminder not to be seduced or repulsed by packaging. The best gifts come in all manner of wrapping. The savior who came to save the world did so without the trappings of power. May we focus on the gift he offers, regardless of how it comes. May we learn to recognize opportunities for Kingdom work in unexpected places. May we avoid the temptation of larger boxes and fancier displays and seek the salvation offered to us.

Andrew Corley
School of Divinity Student