Searching through stores and websites over the last few weeks, I have been looking for just the right Christmas gifts for my family members – the perfect gifts, you could say. I love each person in my family so much and enjoy giving them things that will make them smile.
Affection and care for one another are qualities that often lead the way at this time of year. We might say that beneath the wrappings of Christmas packages, heartfelt giving is symbolic of an invaluable spiritual quality: love. More than any item, the action of love – shared love, forgiving love, encouraging love – truly is the perfect gift.
I often find it helpful to pause and consider the source of these powerful gifts of love. This week’s Bible lesson published in the Christian Science Quarterly, which is on the topic of “Christian Science,” begins with an insightful prompting: “Let us thank God for his priceless gift!” (II Corinthians 9:15, Good News Translation). Indeed, genuine love has its source in God, whom the Bible literally defines as Love. More than just a loving entity, God is all-present divine Love itself.
God’s love overflows continually in His children. It is always available for sharing. Because divine Love is infinite, expressing God’s love toward one another can never deplete us. In fact, the more God-inspired love we gift to others, the stronger we feel Love’s presence ourselves. Christ Jesus proved that outwardly expressing God’s love isn’t just pleasant; it is powerful! Behind the healing and saving works of Jesus was God’s potent love, shining so brightly.
“Science and Health with Key to the Scriptures” – a book gifted to the world by the founder of Christian Science, Mary Baker Eddy – brings out the spiritual meaning of the Bible. It includes this statement about Jesus that is also included in the Bible lesson: “Jesus demonstrated Christ; he proved that Christ is the divine idea of God – the Holy Ghost, or Comforter, revealing the divine Principle, Love, and leading into all truth” (p. 332).
As in Jesus’ day, here and now in our day, we can listen for and be comforted and healed by Christ – God’s voice, revealing divine Love’s goodness, guidance, and governing law. We can cultivate a practice of quiet, receptive inner stillness. Then, within our thoughts, we hear, see, and feel how God, Love, has gifted all His children with spiritual wholeness, abundance, joy, purity, and more.
Further on in this week’s Bible lesson comes a beautiful verse: “Every good gift and every perfect gift is from above, and cometh down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning” (James 1:17). As God’s spiritual offspring, we each have been given the “perfect gift” of spiritual perfection, along with an inherent awareness of our and everyone’s true, spiritual identity. In reality, God’s children can’t receive anything that’s not from God, good.
Some years ago, I felt so ill that I was unable to do much besides stay in my room. I took a sip of water occasionally, but that was all. In the afternoon on the second day of this, I turned to God in prayer with a desire simply to feel His gift of love for me.
In answer, I got so much more than I expected. A Christly awareness of divine Love’s presence didn’t just come to mind, I felt it permeating everything about me. And I just knew in that moment that God’s perfect gifts could never include sickness. I was so quickly and thoroughly healed that if you’d seen me the next day, you’d never have believed that I’d been even a little ill the day before.
Packages under Christmas trees are certainly delightful, but they don’t hold a candle to the Christly, comforting, life-changing, perfect gifts that divine Love has for every last one of us. As a cherished hymn puts it,
All perfect gifts are from above,
And all our blessings show
The amplitude of God’s dear love
Which every heart may know.
(Laura Lee Randall, “Christian Science Hymnal,” No. 342, © CSBD)
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