Ok, so I was looking through past years' songs and discovered I've never shared a Mannheim Steamroller Christmas song! That's madness!! I remember the first time I heard the first album, in 1987. It had been a gift from my mother-in-law, and I fell in love with it the first time I heard it. I was transfixed! The music overwhelmed me!
Mind you, during my marriage, country music ruled the roost, so this was truly a breath of "Fresh Aire" to me. Once I was free (read divorced) to listen to music I liked (read not country), I began collecting the other Christmas CDs. Now, Christmas isn't Christmas for me unless I have a chance to listen to my collection of Mannheim Steamroller Christmas CDs. Thanks to Pandora, I have a Mannheim Steamroller (Holiday) station and I love it.
This was the first song on the first CD that I first heard from this amazing group. And it ties in with the devotional.
Today's devotional deals with the Magi finding Jesus and presenting him with costly gifts. They weren't meant as bribes, or care packages. They were offerings. These Magi were transfixed and overwhelmed to be in the presence of a King and they brought offerings worthy to give to a King. They weren't focused on the gifts. They were focused on the King before whom they knelt and worshiped.
So too should be our focus.
The gifts are intensifiers of desire for Christ himself in much the same way that fasting is. When you give a gift to Christ like this, it’s a way of saying, “The joy that I pursue (verse 10) is not the hope of getting rich with things from you. I have not come to you for your things, but for yourself. And this desire I now intensify and demonstrate by giving up things, in the hope of enjoying you more, not things. By giving to you what you do not need, and what I might enjoy, I am saying more earnestly and more authentically, ‘You are my treasure, not these things.’”
I think that’s what it means to worship God with gifts of gold and frankincense and myrrh.
May God take the truth of this text and waken in us a desire for Christ himself. May we say from the heart, “Lord Jesus, you are the Messiah, the King of Israel. All nations will come and bow down before you. God wields the world to see that you are worshiped. Therefore, whatever opposition I may find, I joyfully ascribe authority and dignity to you, and bring my gifts to say that you alone can satisfy my heart, not these.”
And, so, here is my offering. As I mentioned earlier, the music overwhelmed me when I first heard it. And the joy and euphoria and delight that I experienced with the music is my offering. It's not in the music that I find my delight, it is in Christ, the giver and creator of such beauty and delight.
All Things Elda 