It was Christmas time in Josephine, and Dad’s call interrupted my reading. “Loy, come and help me deliver the Christmas Love Baskets!” Christmas Love Baskets – a term for multiple boxes and bags of food per family, including a ham or turkey for Christmas dinner, all provided by a local businessman. The man offered to provide the food, if local churches could supply names of people in need, and then deliver the food to each family. Now, the gathered food was ready for delivery. Dad just needed someone to go with him, someone to be his arms and legs. Disabled in body, Dad was a true conqueror in spirit. He could see unseen needs and opportunities, able to look past outward circumstances to inward realities. He pastored a humble, small-town church with a love that made it the center of the universe. And now he was calling for me to help him – to help him into the van, and then ride with him to make the deliveries.

I really didn’t want to go. I had seen people take food and other assistance ungratefully. “Can’t one of the other boys go?” I asked. “Sure, but I want you to go,” he said.

So, I grudgingly agreed. We headed out into the rolling Pennsylvania hills, winter skies spitting snow, muted Advent light intermittently lighting the hardwood trees and snow-dusted mountainsides in pastels of amber and gold.

The first home affirmed my biases. As I carried in the food, a cigarette-smoking man lounged in the living room, watching TV. He glanced up with a grunt, barely changing positions, never offering to help. The atmosphere hung as stale as the pale cigarette smoke. Half-hearted Christmas decorations adorned the walls, accompanied by women with sad eyes, and children with hollow faces. “Merry Christmas, and God bless you!” I said. The wife managed a wan smile: “Thank you! And God bless you.”

The deliveries continued, from hamlet to house, decrepit dwellings on country roads, mobile home courts, drafty old row houses or ramshackle shacks perched on sides of hardwood hills – a widow, a single mother, a lonely alcoholic, one poor family and then another… one by one the deliveries mounted. And so did the growing sense of divine worth. With each stop, the back of the van grew barer, but my heart grew fuller.

Somewhere on those back roads, as the fading daylight began to hint of early winter evening, the light in my heart grew brighter. Somewhere – I couldn’t say exactly where – the meaning of the deliveries became NOT in how the persons responded, nor in their apparent worthiness or unworthiness of the gifts, but rather in the gifts themselves: we were doing the work of God in the giving, no matter the response. The truth broke in upon me, like a holy glow filling the van: Christmas is really God’s Love Basket offered to a cold, darkened world – to people with hearts far from Him, God lavishes the most priceless gift of eternity, ever calling us to salvation in Christ. And oh! what wonder – that even the best of us, at our best, could never be worthy of this Gift! It is given extravagantly, poured out as grace upon us, at the very moment of our worst enmity with God, covered up in the stale smoke of our ungrateful existence, yet the Gift comes in: “His Name is Jesus! And He will save His people from their sins.” “Joy to the World!” “Merry Christmas!”

Somewhere on that holy road, delivering many “unappreciated” Love Baskets in an old Ford van, I saw myself in the tapestry of need and grace: Desperately in need of a Gift that I could never deserve. The offer to participate in this backwoods Christmas giving was also a gift that I also did not deserve.

Dad didn’t say much. He simply reached his hand over on my shoulder. “It’s good to be with you, son. I’m glad you came with me.” “Me too, Dad.”

On the drive home, in the deepening winter light, the sounds of Christmas singing filled the van: “You can hear the voices of Rejoicing Love, Rejoicing Love, singing Joy to the World from up above. Bringing peace, goodwill to man, it’s that special time again. You can hear the voices of Rejoicing Love!”

Friends, have you received this holy Gift? And are you passing it on? You can never deserve it, and you can never earn it. And on your very worst day, it is reaching out to you in Joy. So, just give up the struggle, and receive it – and join in the giving. A life worth living! Amen.