gifts...

I might get a lot of flack for this…but 1.  I don't really like the whole draw a name and you are only allowed to give a gift to that person thing.  We can't give a gift to someone else because we need to make sure it is fair… one gift for each person 2. I really don't like when everyone agrees on a price limit for gifts (with the exception of something like a white elephant gift exchange).  We must be careful to make sure our gift giving is always an equal exchange. 3. I really really don't like the need we feel in our society to give a gift to someone, just because they gave one to us. We are missing the mark on what it really means to give.
A gift is something given, with no strings attached, no thing or no service expected in return. GIFT. Period.   In our fallen world we work in exchanges instead of gifts, where situations like the ones listed above are many and true gifts are few.  You have had the feeling before, I know have… someone you don't expect gives you a present and you feel like you should get them one (or lie and tell them you got one and run out and get one later).  Or someone offers to pay for your dinner or coffee and you just can't… you will feel like you owe them. We are generally bad givers and bad receivers.  We steal chance for people to mirror heavenly giving. No wonder we have a hard time understanding God's grace.   We think gifts are something to be earned.   But grace is being given what we don't deserve.
Like we didn't deserve God's only son to make the ultimate sacrifice by becoming a man and  dying on a cross for us.

Who, being in very nature God,

did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage;

rather, he made himself nothing

by taking the very nature of a servant,

being made in human likeness.

And being found in appearance as a man,

he humbled himself

by becoming obedient to death—

even death on a cross! Philippians 2:6-8

And we don't earn this.  We can't earn this.  It is impossible.   We instead accept God's extension of His grace. So in the season of giving I am trying to remember this.  Whether I am the giver or the receiver.