There is a financial institution near our home which is always seeking new investors. The electronic, digital, crawler on their building – in addition to messaging the date, time, and temperature – promises a “free gift” to anyone who opens an account.
In our challenging times it is certainly naïve to ask rhetorically or, heaven forbid, out loud: “What other kind of gift is there? If a gift is not free, how can it be a gift?”
The very fact that a commercial enterprise promising a gift feels the need to offer assurance that their gift is “free” illustrates our ever-on-the-lookout-for-attached-strings times. Indeed, we have become accustomed to and often look for the strings which are attached to the offers and invitations which come our way.
So many examples.
At the Christmas Eve service I attended just weeks ago, the presiding pastor of the large congregation gathered and comprised of many visitors, offered a sincere welcome. The pastor, on behalf of the congregation, encouraged visitors to check out the welcome tables where gifts were waiting for them. Then very quickly came the pastoral assurance that a visitor checking out the welcome tables would not be asked for contact information to receive the gift and that no solicitation for a financial contribution to the church would be made. These assurances were couched in lovely language “in the spirit of the gift of the Christ Child,” but the message of promising no strings attached was clear. I could relate!
I remember the years of conducting such Christmas Eve services filled as they were with visitors seeking a holiday candlelight moment. Expressions of genuine welcome – particularly on that singular holy night – had to be carefully made to assure that no contemporary shepherd would try to “hook” them. No wise lay person of the congregation would solicit funds on behalf of the sheep.
The message of free grace, unconditional, steadfast love is a not easily received. Our times have made such realities thought to be all tied up with hidden strings being knotted and pulled by someone, somewhere. We who have become accustomed to the artful grifters in everything from politics, religion, cryptocurrency, bitcoin come-ons, along with the acceptance of an ever higher and higher level of lying and alternative facts, have turned a truly free gift into a hard sell. There just must be a catch. Right? Come on, tell me the truth. What’s it going to cost me?
The hard hits of such unrelenting, negative impact by our all-too-numerous grifters, have knocked more and more of us into a Damar Hamlin-like spiritual cardiac arrest. But unlike his wonderful recovery, many of us in such life-threatening, spiritual, arrhythmia do not.
Unconditional love. Unearned grace. God’s welcome table. Open an account, invest in, and receive such absolutely free gifts.