Skip to main content

All Wrapped Up



  J.C. and Rollie Hall ran into a problem during the 1917 holiday season: Business had been too good.

  At their Kansas City, Missouri shop they ran out of the white, red, and green tissue papers that were the era’s standard gift dressing.  Poking around the shop, Rollie realized they still had a stack of fancy French paper meant for lining envelopes. On a lark, he placed the lining paper in a showcase and priced it at 10 cents a sheet. The paper sold out instantly.

  The next year, the Hall brothers pressed their luck, offering the fancy paper again during the holiday season.  Again, it flew off shelves.  By 1919, the brothers had decided to print their own special paper for concealing presents, and the gift wrap business was born. Today, wrapping paper is a $3.2 billion industry, and you can still buy it by the roll at the Halls’ store, Hallmark. [i]

  You can hardly imagine today a gift today not wrapped up in something fancy, but the greatest gift given to mankind was only wrapped in swaddling cloths

And she gave birth to her firstborn son; and she wrapped Him in cloths, and laid Him in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.
Luke 2:7

 God’s only son came not in kingly garb, not in royal apparel but as a simple baby.  His exact birth site unknown, his first crib a feeding trough, the only witness other than his parents on that first night a few ordinary shepherds.

"For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.
John 3:16

  Yet this child would bring the greatest treasure, to mankind: salvation.  Because of this gift we can be right with God. By being clothed with him, we are taken as sons of God (Galatians 3:26-27).

  You would think something so awesome could start out so ordinary.



[i] From Article by Ethan Rex on mentalfloss.com
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Until Midnight

    In Acts 20, there is the tragicomic event surrounding a young man by the name of Eutychus. He did what a lot of folks before and after him did, he fell asleep during a sermon. Unfortunately, he was setting in in the third story window at the time. So instead of nodding off and hitting the pew in front of him, he fell to his death. The good news was the apostle Paul was delivering the sermon and had the ability to bring him back.       I don’t know, however, if we can judge Eutychus too harshly. The sermon had gone on till midnight. Paul wouldn’t finish it up till daybreak. That’s a long lesson. I know some folks that might want to jump out of a window if I had a lesson that long, yet these Christians wanted to be there to hear Paul.   Don’t get me wrong, I’m not pushing for all night sermons but I think we might need to adopt these folks' dedication. They knew that Paul was only in town for a limited time only and they were determined to ...
Post a Comment
Read more

The Gift You Give Yourself

    I always hated buying gifts for my Mom. If I got her something like a new set of pans, it was like saying “Here’s something you can use to go make me something to eat”. A gift for her was seemingly a gift for me.   There are however gifts you give that benefit you more than the receiver. For example, forgiveness. When you give it, you are giving it to yourself as much as you are giving it to them. Jesus said that when we forgive others it means God is forgiving us our wrongs (Matthew 6:14-15).  I once read: “ Heaven is where everyone's forgiven. Hell is where nobody's forgiven.  So, when we forgive we pull heaven down into our lives.  When we withhold forgiveness, we pull hell up into our lives ” Give yourself something nice today, Forgive.
Post a Comment
Read more

Why Does A Lion Tamer Use a Chair?

  Ok, I know you have seen the image. A lion tamer enters in the cage of the beast and forces it to obey his commands using a whip, a gun and a chair. Now you can see how the whip and gun could come in handy but you might be wondering why a chair would intimidate an animal as powerful as a lion? Clyde Beatty taming a lion with a chair   It's not that the lion is afraid of the chair -- it's that the lion is confused by the chair. Cats are single-minded, and the points of the chair's four legs bobbing around confuse the lion enough that it loses its train of thought. Casually put, the chair distracts the lion from wanting to claw the lion tamer's face off. The powerful creature could destroy the chair in moment’s notice but instead it is distracted into submission.  It’s not too much different than how Satan controls us today. By the power of God we could overcome anything that he would use to subdue us. We can overcome the evil one (1 st John 2:13-14). ...
Post a Comment
Read more