Four years ago come Christmas, while serving as interim pastor at Salem Covenant Church in New Brighton, then little Erin Shannon came up after worship one Sunday morning in late Advent with a Christmas gift for me."I want to give my pastor a Christmas gift," she told her mother, "and I want it to be a really good one." Well, what she gave me was a timeless gift, here pictured, a gift that I have been opening regularly ever since, one that never fails to feed my spirit and bring me back to ground zero in life, which is my relationship to God.
"The wise lover," a Kempis imagines Christ speaking, "regards not so much the gift of Him who loves as the love of Him who gives.... The noble lover does not rest in the gift but in Me Who am above every gift."
My thanks, Erin, for giving me such a wonderful gift that Sunday--a classic gift that does not wear out with use but keeps drawing me and my spirit toward the Gift beyond all gifts. Through Thomas a Kempis you have time and again renewed my communion with God himself, ever willing and ready to feed my hungry soul and supply its deepest need.
Each time I read from The Imitation of Christ I think of you and the wonderful personal note you enclosed with your gift, now inserted in its front cover. And I pray in hope that you yourself and all the generations surrounding you now will find your place in the company of God's people who are longing for and seeking daily, like me, the salvation--that wholeness in life--that only he can supply.
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