THANKFUL

Good afternoon, friends. Time for a little Hump-Day Humor to give you some Christmas gift ideas. Love to all and Merry Christmas.

“Modern Day Gifts the Magi Failed to Bring Jesus”

For years, your humble Aggie scribe and Mrs. Aggie helped our dear friends Carolyn and Tom plan the annual Sunday school class Christmas party in their upscale home. One year, as Carolyn planned the party, she noticed much of their dinnerware seemed to have mysteriously disappeared.

Poor ole Tom. Carolyn blamed him for misplacing cups and plates, losing silverware, crystal glasses and other fancy stuff rich folks use. Her anxiety sky-rocketed when she realized she didn’t have enough formal silverware to cover the number of expected guests. As party time approached, she feared being banished from the Sunday school class for mixing the Christofle with Trader Joe’s silverware. Her stress level was already dangerously high since her University of Oklahoma coffee mug came up missing. Being a die-hard OU fan, she knew drinking any liquid out of a non-OU container when the Sooners were playing, made receivers drop passes and the cheerleaders overalls to come unbuttoned.

“Don’t worry, Carolyn,” I said cheerfully. “No one will notice.” She gave me that “you gotta be a silverware dufus” look.

The silverware crisis never evolved. The silverware-ignorant crowd was too busy laughing and socializing to notice the horrors of the mixed utensils. The class gathered around the Christmas tree for the “white elephant” gift exchange. When the gift swapping and stealing finally subsided and everyone got what they wanted or didn’t want, one big bulky present, with Carolyn’s name on it, remained under the tree.

With great effort, I manhandled the present, and like one of the Magi at that first Christmas, dropped the precious treasure at her feet.

“What’s this?” She looked confused.

“Open it and see.”

She tore off the wrapping and opened the box. People still talk how she laughed so hard she snorted eggnog out her nose. Carolyn looked at me and immediately labeled me as the offspring of the canine species.

“What is it!” People surrounded the package, expecting gold, frankincense, and myrrh.

“It’s my stuff,” Carolyn said. “It’s my missing stuff. My silverware, my plates!” She snorted more eggnog. “Jimmy Eskew, I oughta hang you. You’re a thieving Aggie!”

“Let me explain, dear.” I said. “I knew you lost stuff during the year, so with Christmas love, I’m just replacing what you lost.”

During the year, when I visited Tom and Carolyn, I’d sneak out a plate, or pieces of silverware, or a wine goblet, or just anything I could hide. My Holy Grail of all items was her OU coffee mug. The picture of my Aggie mug sitting atop the OU mug should be hanging on the wall in the Dixie Chicken in Aggieland. I refused to say I stole these items, since my plan was noble. So, at the end of the year, I boxed up these items and gave them to Carolyn as a Christmas present. I just restored what she lost. But her stuff wasn’t the only thing she had restored.

The Bible tells us in the second chapter of Joel, how God restores that which the locust, i.e., the devil, stole from us. Many Christ-followers spent years neglecting their relationship with the Savior. Some were distracted by the world’s attractions and one day woke up to find themselves in the wilderness, away from their Savior. Others angrily walked away, vowing never to return. Whatever the case, the devil used these times to destroy families, ruin careers, create hellish addictions. His lies were so compelling, in our weakened spiritual state, we fell hook, line and sinker.

But God is faithful. In His mercy, He sends His Spirit to draw the wandering back to Him. He doesn’t condemn us, like Satan does. Instead, He loves us back into His fold just as we are, broken and bruised. Our heavenly Father holds us close to His heart and starts the work of restoration of our wounded soul and spirit. God restores what the devil took from us. I love how the Message Bible tells Jesus’ words in John 3:16–17: “This is how much God loved the world: He gave His Son, His one and only Son. And this is why: so that no one need be destroyed; by believing in Him, anyone can have a whole and lasting life. God didn’t go to all the trouble of sending his Son merely to point an accusing finger, telling the world how bad it was. He came to help, to put the world right again. Anyone who trusts in Him is acquitted . . .”

“Thank You Jesus, for coming to restore that which was lost and make all things new.”

Stay close to Jesus.

Jimmy

P.S. Other items in the box included her missing patio furniture and gas grill. But snuggled behind her missing 65-inch flat screen TV was Mandy, her missing schnauzer, who had holed up in her missing ficus tree. Her smile quickly turned into a scowl. If looks could kill, I was a dead man. “Listen, buster!” She wagged her finger in my face. “Nobody messes with my schnauzer!”

Jimmy Eskew © 2018