December 10, 2009
We had our annual church Christmas Banquet last Friday night. The room was beautifully decorated and the food was fabulous. Scott and I host a table every year, which means we bring our Christmas dishes, centerpiece, candles, and favors for each place, as well as invite people to sit with us. Table hosts make sure everyone feels welcome. After dinner and dessert is the much-anticipated White Elephant Gift Exchange.
Have you ever been to one? Each person brings a wrapped gift. It may be a good gift or it may be a “white elephant.” The white elephant is the ugly placemat set you’ve been dying to get rid of ever since Aunt Gladys gave it to you and she won’t be at the banquet, so…into the gift bag it goes. Or, it’s the gag gift you got at the last White Elephant gift exchange! Gifts can be stolen, so the good gifts move around a couple turns till they are “frozen.” If you open a “white elephant,” you are stuck with it forever.
The Real White Elephant
I did some checking and the “white elephant” phrase comes from the Southeast Asian monarchs of the world. A white elephant (yes, an actual elephant) was a sacred gift, a sign of the monarch’s favor on you. To be given a white elephant was an honor, but also difficult. Because the beast was considered sacred, no one was allowed to use it for labor. You had all the upkeep costs and no labor benefits to offset that cost. Oh, look! We’ve been given a white elephant—great!
Perhaps we already own a white elephant. No, really. We need to look in the backyard of our heart. Is that a white elephant out there?
Our Own Honored Burden?
Sometimes people give us “gifts” that we hold onto when we really should get rid of them. That “backhanded compliment” that over time, you’ve come to believe about yourself. The inherited sin of your family you feel you can’t escape. Sometimes people unconsciously try to honor someone who has passed on or who was a mentor by living out things that aren’t even positive. We take on burdens from other people that may have nothing to do with us at all. But the truth is, when we are bound, we don’t make anyone else more free.
Freedom
It’s time to let that white elephant go. It’s not really an honor. It really is a burden. So why not take that attitude or habit and give it to Jesus? Picture giving the reins of that white elephant to Him. He will lead it out of your backyard and take it away and you can be free.
Jesus came that we “may have life and have it to the full” (John 10:10). He also came to “proclaim freedom for the prisoners, … to release the oppressed” (Luke 4:18). Let’s not labor under burdens put on us by other people, not matter who it was or even if their intent was good. Let the white elephant go. Walk free.
What is the white elephant you’re giving to Jesus today?