This week we continue our advent celebration. It is a wonderful time to stop in the midst of the season and truly focus on the reason for all the wonderful merriment of Christmas. This week is JOY.
These days Christmas looks far different from what I refer to as “the year of the turtle.” At the time, our son was in grade school, him becoming a father one day was unimaginable. Yet here we are…my first born is dad to three amazing little girls. I love seeing him be a father. As I sat to write this blog about JOY, I was thinking of that “year of the turtle”. I was thinking about how he may now have a new understanding of that unusual Christmas gift. I know he too has grappled with keeping his girls’ dreams buoyed up while balancing the realities of life.
“The year of the turtle” took place the year our son asked Santa for a turtle. Inspired by the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle craze, he asked for a real live turtle. It was one of the few things he specifically asked Santa for, so I set about trying to make his “dream come true”. At first, it may sound like a simple, even inexpensive, gift request…but it was not.
In the summer and spring, box turtles could be easily found in the nearby woods, but mid-winter was NOT a good time to go turtle hunting. I scoured every pet shop in town for a turtle. Here’s a tidbit of information that may surprise you as it did me…it is illegal to sell turtles less than 4 in diameter due to the high instances of salmonella in juvenile species. As a result, many pet shops did not sell turtles.
It took three weeks, numerous phone calls and an hour-long drive before I found a shop that could sell me a box turtle. That simple box turtle, which ordinarily I could have found in our back yard for free, cost me over twenty dollars and a tremendous amount of time and effort. It was worth it all when our son came down the stairs Christmas morning and found his requested turtle in an aquarium under the tree. He named him Michelangelo.
I wanted to let our son know how difficult it had been to get him this gift. I wanted him to know how much it cost in terms of time and money. I wanted him to understand the cost meant this was no ordinary box turtle.
He would not have understood the cost back then. Old enough to grasp certain matters of money, he was not old enough to understand the price of time and effort. Just locating a live turtle in December was a small miracle. This turtle cost much more than the price paid at the pet shop. I knew he could not comprehend the cost, but I relished the joy in my son’s eyes when he saw the turtle under the tree.
Now, as a father himself, he no doubt comprehends the true cost of that turtle under the tree. Each year I think of “the year of the turtle” and am reminded of my own inability to truly grasp the cost of the greatest gift I have ever received, the grace of God.
Through Jesus Christ we are given unearned favor and forgiveness for our sin. It is God’s gift to all people. It is a gift whose cost we cannot comprehend. It is a gift that is the seed of joy in every believer’s heart.
This is the news of great joy, that we are saved by His grace and mercy and have the hope of eternal life and forgiveness of our sins through our savior Jesus Christ, a gift with a cost we cannot comprehend!
Luke 2:10 And the angel said to them, “Do not be afraid; for behold I bring you good news of a great JOY which shall be for ALL the people…”
Tuesday With Teri 