Tis the season for giving gifts to our children, our mother and father, aunts, uncles, cousins, spouses, bosses, employees, mail person, next door neighbor.  The list goes on and on.  As new relationships develop, new obligations form for gift giving. I went out shopping yesterday for my wonderful wife and had a ball picking out some presents that were new and beautiful (at least to me and I hope to her).  I looked for the gift that would match her desires and interests.  I thought about what she had said in the past so that I could match her words with appropriate gifts.  It was a great day of thinking about her and what she would like.

Our small group was no exception.  We had our Christmas party last night and had a white elephant gifting where you bring the least favorite thing in your house and wait expectedly for the surprised look on the person who gets your back scratcher, or your golf gadget that counts your strokes and replaces your divots.  In this gifting, if you don’t like the bird with the broken tail, you can trade it with someone who has a salad bowl-shaped in the form of leaves.  What you are stuck with at the end of the game provides future gifts for the next white elephant.

The most unusual gift is not what happened with the gifts that we got during the game, but the exercise we participated in before the game began.  I asked each person to come up with a gift that we could give the Lord Jesus Christ this coming year for Him to transform.  You see, what we bring to the Lord is broken and bent.  It has been used and abused.  It’s discolored and dented.  Our lives and our relationships have been damaged by our choices and our seeking to control and change our lives.  But the Lord doesn’t want us to change our lives, but to bring our brokenness to him so that He can do the transformation.  The most unusual gift is our brokenness that we are ashamed of.  It is our inability to get along with certain people in the world that He wants us to bring to Him.  Relationships that are severed and disconnected are the very things that He wants us to bring to Him, asking Him to take control of our brokenness and our broken relationships so that He can bring about transformation.

In Psalms 51:17 it says, “My sacrifice O God, is a broken spirit; a broken and contrite heart you God will not despise.” God is not interested in the best we have to offer, but He desires our brokenness and the damaged pieces of our lives and our relationships so that He can transform them into something that is truly beautiful.

What is your most unusual gift you have to offer the Master.  Remember that He is waiting on this journey to turn your and my brokenness into relationships that will truly reflect His beauty.