He had been anticipating this special day for
weeks, counting down the hours that had crept painfully slow. There were more
presents under the tree than he could even count, and, oh, the thrill . . .
many of them had his name on the tags!
And now Christmas Day was here at last!
He could barely contain his excitement!
He opened the first one, ripping into the
paper, the bow flying off. It was a . .
. a book? Well, that wasn’t exactly what
he was expecting, but Ok, he thought. A book
is good. I like to read. And still, there were many more gifts to
open. One by one, he opened the
packages. A skateboard. A basketball.
A chess set. And with each
present that he opened, his shoulders stooped just a little bit more, and each
“thank you” became less and less enthusiastic.
When the last gift had been opened, he looked around in utter disbelief,
threw himself onto the floor in a heap, and wailed, “But I wanted an X-Box!”
Poor kid.
He didn’t get the one gift he had hoped for. The one he had been envisioning. And all of the other gifts, by comparison,
were inferior. It wasn’t that he was
ungrateful. He just couldn’t help but
feel disappointed and heart-broken. Let
down. His dreams for the perfect gift
had been dashed.
I get it.
I’m just like my foster son on that Christmas morning long ago. My dreams were so big and my expectations
were so high. I had prayed and hoped and
anticipated the gift that the Lord was going to give me. I just knew that what He gave me would exceed
my wildest expectations.1
He gave me a gift, alright. But it wasn’t the one I was expecting.
