The Gift You Never Knew You Always Wanted

“It’s something you never knew you always wanted,” Bubbe replied to the quizzical expression on her beloved granddaughter’s face. The cryptic explanation just added to the mystery of this compact yet weighty gift.

 As the gift-wrap retreated under agile fingers, curiosity became confusion. Her eyes said, What am I supposed to do with this?

 But . . . not wanting to offend her beloved grandmother, the college senior raised her brand-new electric waffle iron for the gathered family to admire. At that moment, she had no idea how prescient her Bubbe’s enigmatic description would be.

 Forty years later, all doubts of the gift’s value had evaporated like steam from a hot waffle. The thought of living without this gift is unimaginable. Hundreds of from-scratch buttermilk waffles, Krusteaz mix waffles, cornbread dinner waffles, served to her beloved mother, siblings, sorority sisters, roommates, husband, three children, and untold honored guests, proved her grandma a prophet.

 What am I supposed to do with this? became I can’t imagine living without it! It truly was a gift she never knew she always wanted.

 The Christmas season reminds me that Jesus was just such a gift to me, a nice Jewish boy from New York City. From Thanksgiving to December 25th Jesus was unavoidable:

• A block away from our synagogue, in front of Epiphany Catholic Church, a goyishe blond-haired-blue-eyed baby Jesus lay in a manger with his arms outstretched in blessing, framing a beatific smile.

• We sang about Jesus during our holiday assembly at PS 40.

• Greetings of “Merry Christmas” were ubiquitous if not obligatory.

• Even the normally jaded entertainment industry produced avalanches of Christmas-related programming.  

Christmas’ Jesus may have been a cherished gift to our gentile neighbors, but not to my Jewish people. To us, Christmas and Jesus were a cultural onslaught to be countered with evasion. On Christmas Day it was evasion by cinema and Chinese food – so common a practice as to invite humor.

Q: What did the Chinese waiter say to the Catholic priest who came to eat Chinese food on Christmas day?

A: “Funny, you don’t look Jewish.”  

Perhaps you can relate to my experience. If so, we are like the teenage recipient of the waffle iron. People offer us Jesus at Christmas and we think to ourselves, What am I supposed to do with this?

Sadly, our ignorance of the gift blinds us to its surpassing value. How so? Because the Jesus of Christmas is the gift we never knew we always wanted!

This sounds absurd to us because after 2,000 years Jesus has been “regifted and rewrapped” so often he looks like a Gentile. But peel back the centuries of goyishe wrappings and you discover the most Jewish of Jewish gifts – our Moshiach.

Under all the Christmas greetings, carols, and creches is the king for whose kingdom we long. He will vanquish Israel’s enemies, reign from Jerusalem, bring righteousness and justice to the nations of the earth, wipe away every tear, and remove the shroud of death from over the earth once and for all.

How can we know Christmas’ Jesus is the genuine Jewish gift? Because the accounts of His birth make no sense apart from Messianic Jewish promises. He arrived exactly as HaShem promised – from Chavah’s seed, through Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, the tribe of Judah, through King David’s line, born of a Jewish virgin, in David’s city, Bet-lechem, all according to the Tanakh.

•  For more messianic descriptions in the Jewish scriptures see: The Mystery of Israel’s Messiah

Through this gift, G-d offers healing for all that is wrong between us (Jewish or Gentile) and Himself, and then all that is wrong in this world. The sin that alienates us from him is cleansed once-for-all, opening the way to thrive in his presence today and forever. Like Abraham our father, the righteousness we desperately need becomes ours, not by our effort, but by trusting in G-d’s free gift.

 This Christmas season stop evading G-d’s gift and embrace it. The answer to the question “What am I supposed to do with this?” is simple: peel away the centuries of wrappings and start enjoying your Messiah! Once you do you will wonder how you ever got along without him!

 And . . . if you have already received and appreciate G-d’s gift, the Christmas season and time that follows is the perfect time to share him, especially with those who are confused by the current packaging!

For G-d so loved the world, that He gave His only unique Son,

that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.
(John 3:16)

For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of G-d is eternal life.
(Romans 6:23)

For more of my encounter with Yeshua, you can watch my brief story below: