The Gift of Simplicity
Simple Gifts - Part 2
Sunday, December 10, 2023
Matthew 6:19-21, Luke 3:8-14, Philippians 4:4-13
Stop collecting treasures for your own benefit on earth, where moth and rust eat them and where thieves break in and steal them. Instead, collect treasures for yourselves in heaven, where moth and rust don’t eat them and where thieves don’t break in and steal them. Where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.
Matthew 6:19-21 (CEB)
Listen to this Week’s Sermon here:
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Growing up in Baltimore, I remember fondly our annual Thanksgiving weekend trips to the snowy Christmas Tree Farm toward Pennsylvania, hiking through the fresh pines, taking in the wonderful scent, cutting the best one with a hacksaw and laying it on the conveyor to be wrapped up tightly in a net before putting it on the top of the car for the long drive home. When we moved to Florida, we stopped buying real trees. It’s not quite the same picking them up from out front of a grocery store.
They say artificial trees last an average of 5 to 10 years. Given the price of real trees, that’s not a bad investment. In November of 2000, McKenzie and I set off to Wal-mart to pick up a few decorations for our first Christmas together. We had only been married 6 months and couldn’t afford much, but my one condition was that a Christmas tree had to be taller than me. We found a 7.5 foot artificial Donner Fir for $79.74. At the time, this was a pretty big investment for our budget, but 24 Christmases later, it is still the focal point of our living room from Thanksgiving to Epiphany. So far, that investment has averaged out to $3.32 per year. That tree has moved from a 1 bedroom apartment, to a double-wide trailer, to a small campus dorm style apartment in seminary, to 3 parsonages between Kentucky and North Carolina, and now to a rental home in Concord. Every year it seems to lose more needles than it originally had, and yet somehow it is just as beautiful as that first Christmas. A few years ago we talked about replacing it, but then we saw at a store how poinsettias could easily fill in a few bare spots. We’ve moved from trying to find the cheapest one we could to being content with it each year and now to the point where we really never want to give it up. It, along with the random collection of ornaments that trace our entire family history, have become part of our family.
So what in the world does this nostalgic story of an artificial Wal-mart Christmas tree have to do with Advent or with scripture? Well, maybe nothing… on the other hand, maybe everything. For us, this tree along with the small nativity and two tiny wreaths we bought that first Christmas have served as a beautiful reminder of the simplicity we long for in this often hectic season. They are no longer decorations just to put something up for Christmas, but have become symbols of what really matters most. There have been some hard times and very challenging Christmases over these 24 years, and this tree has seen them all. It’s branches hold space to remember the beauty in every season, no matter how hard it got.
I wonder, what Christmas decoration or tradition might hold that kind of simple wonder for you?
What little thing each year, that might go unnoticed by others, holds space for the deepest treasures of your heart?
