Message from the Chaplain

The Importance of Unwrapping

It’s been around for countless years; but somehow never gets old. If you’re after a party game that still draws young children in, you really can’t go past “Pass the Parcel”.  Do you remember the anticipation that comes with playing the game. Would the music stop when the parcel got to you?  Would there be something there when you took off the next layer of wrapping paper (or newspaper)? Who would get the final prize at the end of the game??

I was at a Pass the Parcel game that actually ended in big disappointment for the girl who was the last to unwrap the ‘parcel’: and so got the “big” gift at the end.  She burst into tears – because she didn’t want that gift!! She was keener to have one of the lollipops that were among the “little” prizes uncovered much earlier in the game…

If you’re even had to prepare a game of Pass the Parcel, you’ll know that one of the challenges is having enough layers on the “parcel” to make the game last the right amount of time – as well as disguising the final prize so the children can’t guess what it is before that last turn!  Come to think of it, that’s one of the problems in wrapping any gift, isn’t it? Can you hide its shape well enough (especially if it’s something like a bicycle!) so that it will be a surprise for the person who’s receiving it?

As we enter that time when we’ll be wrapping Christmas gifts (just over a month to go now!), I think that God does one of the best ‘disguise jobs’ on the wrapping for the best Gift ever.  After all, if you were to give the world the most important person in history, how would you “wrap” them?  As an important ruler, acknowledged and admired by everyone they meet?  God’s gift to us of His Son, the world’s Lord and Saviour, is instead presented to us in the form of an unremarkable tradesman and teacher, from a tiny Middle Eastern village – surely the most unexpected ‘gift wrapping’ ever!  Unfortunately, so many people haven’t looked beyond this layer, and so haven’t discovered all that Jesus Christ is and does.  Don’t be like them and settle for the “little things” – the Gift of Gifts is yours to open!

Rev Mark Rundle