Exchanges and Returns (GH Day 25)

A few days after Christmas I stood in a slow line at Kohl’s to return a Christmas gift—not one given to me, but one I had purchased for someone else. (My sister and I had gotten our signals crossed about gifts for our mother this year.) Seeing the chaotic piles of returned items behind the Kohl’s Customer Service counter, I pitied the personnel who would have to sort through and replace it all.

What did you hope to receive this past Christmas? Although it is a blessing to receive things we want, sometimes we receive "gifts" we don't necessarily want, but perhaps we need. These gifts may be prosaic, but at least we can appreciate their value. What, though, about the gifts we receive but don't yet realize we need?  

Sometimes our loved ones can see a need in our lives that we cannot yet perceive. George Herbert's poem "Hope" presents a similar scenario (quote taken from Christian Classics Ethereal Library):*

I gave to Hope a watch of mine: but he

                                 An anchor gave to me.

Then an old prayer-book I did present:

                                 And he an optick sent.

With that I have a viall full of tears:

                                 But he a few green eares.

Ah Loyterer! I’le no more, no more I’le bring:

                                 I did expect a ring.

The poem depicts an exchange of gifts between the narrator and a character he calls “Hope” (for Herbert, personified characters like Hope, Love, and Peace generally refer to the Lord). The first gift exchange is about time: the speaker, giving a watch, indicates his eagerness to move forward in some way. Tempus fugit, he might remark. However, Hope responds with a gift that indicates “stay.” (Anchors, after all, are dropped to stop a boat’s forward motion.) Given the last line—that the speaker expected to receive a ring—we can easily read the analogy of a delayed betrothal in this. Many a woman no doubt has experienced the disappointment of this “anchor” in a relationship.

The next two gift exchanges are more enigmatic: a prayer book (perhaps another allusion to a wedding ceremony?) versus a spyglass (used to see distant objects) and a bottle of collected tears (indicating a long period of unhappiness) versus unripe ears of corn (not ready yet).

But the lessons of "Hope" go beyond gift-exchange occasions like Christmas: they extend to our lives. What did you hope your life would turn out like? Has God said “stay” when you asked for “go”? Has he encouraged a long-distance view (via a spyglass) of your life goals versus your expectations of prompt reward for your consistent devotion? Has he revealed that, although you may have suffered so long that your collected tears could fill a bottle, the time is not yet ripe for his provision of your hopes?

These are not the gifts we want, but the One who knows us best presumably knows what we need. However, the natural human reaction is the one we have here from the narrator: frustration with disappointed expectations and the temptation to give up active participation in the relationship with the Lord, whose name is Hope.

In other words, please tell me there was a gift receipt with that so-called present. And, by the way, what’s Heaven’s exchanges and returns policy? How about merchandise credit, at least?

I’m reminded of Hebrews 11:2. Only with faith—faith that he does know what he’s doing in giving us these apparent gifts—will we one day receive the substance of things hoped for, of things not yet seen. I appreciate how Herbert’s poem “Hope” leaves us in that place of disappointment. It’s human. I should imagine we all can identify with that.

As the Christmas carol “O Little Town of Bethlehem” states, “The hopes and fears of all the years” were met in the little baby born to lower-class parents in a dodgy stable one night. No doubt that precious gift in its humble wrappings did not look like the present anyone had expected! The Pharisees, along with Judas Iscariot and many others, certainly wanted to exchange lowly Jesus of Nazareth for the mighty, kingly person they’d been hoping for. Yet that initially unwanted present turned out to be the best gift of all. And that truth definitely gives me hope.      

* http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/TempleFrames.html