Christmas Treasure

Christmas Treasure

By Dr. John E. Morgan

Pastor–Collinsville Baptist Church

My wife’s family is descending on us this weekend.   It is time for the annual Christmas get together.  There will be lots of laughing.  Lots of eating.  Lots of all those things you do with your family.  Including lots of storytelling.

For many years, the highlight of the weekend has been when our three wise women sit down on the couch and tell stories about their childhood.  The three are sisters, and they are all in their nineties.  Age has meant that they are rarely together anywhere but here at Christmas.  We call them wise women because they are.

They grew up on a Mississippi farm during hard times.  They all had many chores to do.  My mother in-law did most of the cooking for fifteen or so every day. There was school to attend (their father drove an early school bus).  And lots of church activities.  Doors open?  Family there.  The Lawrences are a very Christian family.  It was a life much like ours.  And a life that seems planets away from ours.

Their stories of those times are treasures to be carefully stored and cherished.  They sit on the couch holding hands and talk to each other with smiles of joy on their wrinkled faces remembering those days from almost a century ago.  Memories of people who have gone on to heaven that most of us never knew.

They tell one wonderful story about Christmas.  The children would get a small doll or toy in their sock maybe with a piece of fruit and a few nuts.  There were also a few carefully crafted gifts made by hand exchanged. And there was family together.

Their Uncle Delbert (I think) somehow found a way every Christmas to bring a special gift for the whole family.  He would bring in an entire stalk of bananas.  How he got them, they do not know.  But get that stalk of bananas he did.

And he would hang the stalk from the middle of the door frame.  Those bananas would be hanging there in front of everybody.  And then he would tell them – eat them all.  This was an unbelievable luxury in the middle of a depression among people who pretty much grew everything they ate.

I can just imagine them.  Our three wise women when they were three very smooth skinned young girls.  Heads tilted back.  Eyes bright with wonder and amazement.  Quick looks at parents to be sure it is okay.  And then they would eat those Christmas bananas.  And I like to think that back in the corner stood Uncle Delbert with the brightest smile of all as he watched them each pull a banana off the stalk.  And knowing that it was the best money he would spend all year.  Much like God must smile when we enjoy His good gifts.

This year it looks like we will only have two wise women here.  The third one has just entered a nursing home.  There will be an empty place on the couch.

But we will celebrate.  We will have more food than they could have imagined back on the farm.  But we will not have anything to approach that stalk of bananas.  Nothing that sweet.  Unless it is our memories.

May you share sweet memories this Christmas.  And may you make new, sweet memories that will be shared for years to come.

And our three wise women would be very unhappy with me if I did not remind you that the greatest gift of all was not bananas.  Or memories.  Or even family.

God’s greatest gift of all was and is Jesus Christ.  Our three wise women learned that as little girls at a country church and at their parents’ feet.  They trust Jesus to carry them through struggles now and to someday carry them home.  That is why they are wise.

Thanks be to God for his inexpressible gift!  II Corinthians 9:15