At Christmas, Intangible Gifts Most Important of All

As we celebrate Christmas 2022, and approach the New Year for 2023, like many of you, this writer feels the pressure to overspend and give material gifts to express love to those we hold dear.

While giving gifts at Christmas or at any time of the year is a perfectly honorable expression of gratitude and love, we should also consider the eternal blessings of placing a priority on sharing intangible gifts; for it is they which last throughout the ages.

The greatest gift that this writer’s parents and grandparents passed down to me is a legacy of faith, hope and love connected to our family history that is marked by a commitment to service and compassion.

While I would also love to leave my children and grandchildren a financial legacy of untold millions, I know the most important gift that I can share with them is a true understanding and acceptance of God’s will for their lives.

One thing true of tangible gifts is that they all come with return tags.

The week after Christmas, stores are bombarded with people participating in the long-practiced ritual of returning presents they never wanted in the first place.

Today, many of us whose families passed on legacies of morality and dignity are trading them in for beliefs that are counter to everything we were taught.

This writer knows deep within her soul that her parents and grandparents would be appalled if she traded their lessons and swapped them for the base, depraved "gifts" of this world.

Reading the Book of Matthew 6:25-34 (New King James Version) helps to put all of this in perspective, especially during this time of year, and during our very troubled past two years.

This is wisdom, which for all of us, is everlasting: 

25: "Therefore I say to you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or what you will drink; nor about your body, what you will put on. Is not life more than food and the body more than clothing?

26: "Look at the birds of the air, for they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns; yet your heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they?

27: "Which of you by worrying can add one [a]cubit to his [b]stature?

28: "So why do you worry about clothing? Consider the lilies of the field, how they grow: they neither toil nor spin;

29: "And yet I say to you that even Solomon in all his glory was not [c]arrayed like one of these.

30: "Now if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is, and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will He not much more clothe you, O you of little faith?

31: "Therefore do not worry, saying, 'What shall we eat?' or 'What shall we drink?' or 'What shall we wear?'

32: "For after all these things the Gentiles seek. For your heavenly Father knows that you need all these things.

33: "But seek first the kingdom of God and His righteousness, and all these things shall be added to you.

34:"Therefore do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about its own things. Sufficient for the day is its own trouble."

Let us ask ourselves, hasn’t 2022 with all its pain and joy flown by quickly?

With the new year ahead, we have a remarkable opportunity to "shift gears."

We can put God first in our lives every day, to do so we must pray for ourselves and pray for our nation: daily.

As we wind up this year and move ahead to 2023, let’s imagine the blessings that are in store for us if we embrace faith, hope and love; even as we "see" the challenges around us.

Let’s seek the light; grab hold of the lifeline.

Let’s heed our ancestor’s prayers as we consider embracing those "legacy values," yes, those precious values handed down to us by our parents, forefathers, and others we rightfully look up to.

Tenets many of us have pushed away while chasing those mercurial gifts of the world.

A most merry and blessed Christmas in 2022. A happy new year to all in and for 2023.

Peace on earth.

(For more background on the subjects of the preceding op-ed, please visit here.)

Dr. Alveda C. King serves as Chair of the America First Policy Institute’s Center for the American Dream.​ She is the daughter of the late slain civil rights activist Rev. A. D. King and the niece of the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., as well as a Christian evangelist. She is founder of Speak for Life (speakforlife.org). Dr, King is also an acclaimed author, television host, and film, and music veteran. Read more of Dr. Alveda C. King' Reports — Here.