How appropriate it seems to move into this Advent season - the time of watching and waiting for the One who is the greatest Gift the world has ever received - with the messages of stewardship still ringing in our ears. Our stewardship meditations were all about the hard work, the responsibility, the joy and the blessed peace that giving of ourselves to God entails. By now I hope you have thought and prayed and made your pledge to St. Paul’s for the coming year. If not, there is still time! By now, hopefully, you have had the opportunity to explore deeper meanings of stewardship; you realize that you pledge, not to pay the bills at Church (though that does happen, thank God!), but so that your giving causes you to grow ever more into the image of Christ, the world’s greatest Giver.

Advent really seems to be all about gifts. In our crazy, frenetic world, it is all about rampant consumerism—what to buy for whom, how much, how little, to spend, who to give to, who not. Not a lot of focus on the spiritual nature of gift-giving. But carrying our stewardship meditations with us into this season can help to expand our vision and perhaps bring some perspective to the shopping weeks ahead. A few lines in the current Weavings* helped shed a different light on “putting Christ back in Christmas”. It recalled the gifts of the Magi, perhaps the origin of all our frenzied gifting. They somehow knew that bringing gifts was the right thing to do. And since they were coming to a King, they brought what was appropriate gold, frankincense and myrrh. Hardly the stuff that a young couple with a new baby living in a stable could use! But it was from their treasures that these gifts came forth—it was what they had, what they thought beautiful, and it was from their hearts. Maybe their criteria are good ones to adopt for our gift-giving.

May this season be a blessing for all of us, and may we spend it being gifts to one another and to the world.