PREPARATION

Truth is, the best gifts of all are not meant to be kept or saved; they are intended to be given away…to be handed down from person to person.

Lewis Hyde, author of The Gift, tells of a Massachusetts’ pilgrim who is invited into an Indian lodge and welcomed with a ritual smoking of the peace pipe. After the ritual is completed the Indians give the symbolic pipe to the pilgrim. The pipe is a peace offering and is traditionally circulated among the local tribes, staying in each lodge for a time but always given away sooner or later...but our pilgrim didn’t know about the tradition. In his world he now owned a valuable treasure, his own peace pipe.  

Months later the leaders of a neighboring tribe surprised the pilgrim with a visit and the request that the pipe would returned to them.

The pilgrim called them “Indian Givers! (Yes, that’s where the phrase comes from, according to Hyde.) These poor natives just didn’t grasp the growing application and appreciating of “private property.”

Like the pilgrim, we tend to hold on to our gifts too long. One thing is for sure: the gifts we receive from God are meant to be given. They must be given; they are never private property.

Do you have possessions that really needs to be on the move, given to others? What gifts has God given you that need to be given? Grace? Forgiveness? Second-chances? Love? Joy? Humor?  

Here is your chance to do something totally unexpected, to make a dramatic statement, to unwrap the giver not the present. Then you will discover the reality of Jesus' words, "It is more blessed to give than receive."

INSPIRATION

It all began in 1964 when Larry Kunkel’s mom gave him a pair of moleskin pants. After wearing them a few times, he found they froze stiff in the Minnesota winters. That next Christmas, he wrapped the pants in pretty paper and re-gifted them to his brother-in-law.

Brother-in-law Roy Collette discovered he didn’t want them either. Thus became a legendary, but true giving game. It was like a gag-gift, until one year Collette twisted the pants tightly and stuffed them into a 3-foot-long, 1-inch pipe.

Year after year, as the pants were shuffled back and forth, the guys tried to make unwrapping them more difficult. In retaliation for the pipe, Kunkel compressed the pants into a 7-inch square, wrapped them with wire and gave the “bale” to Collette. Not to be outdone, Collette put the pants into a 2-foot-square crate filled with stones and gave the trusty trousers back to Kunkel.

The brothers agreed to end the caper if the pants were damaged. But they were as careful as they were clever. Kunkel had the pants mounted inside an insulated window that had a 20-year guarantee and shipped them off to Collette.

Collette broke the glass, recovered the trousers, stuffed them into a 5-inch coffee can, which he soldered shut. The can was put in a 5-gallon container filled with concrete and reinforcing rods and given to Kunkel the following Christmas.

Kunkel put the pants in a 223-pound homemade steel ashtray made from 8-inch steel castings and etched Collette’s name on the side.

Collette found a 600-pound safe, put the pants inside and welded the safe shut. The safe was then shipped to Kunkel.

The pants next turned up in a drab green, 3-foot cube that once was a 1974 Gremlin. A note attached to the 2,000-pound scrunched car advised Collette that the pants were inside the glove compartment.

In 1982 Kunkel faced the problem of retrieving the pants from a tire 8 feet high and 2 feet wide and filled with 6,000 pounds of concrete. On the outside Collette had written, “Have a Goodyear.”

In 1983 the pants came back to Collette in a 17.5 foot red rocket ship filled with concrete and weighing 6 tons.

Collette’s revenge for the rocket ship was delivered to Kunkel in the form of a 4-ton Rubik’s Cube in 1985. The cube was made of concrete that had been baked in a kiln and covered with 2,000 board feet of lumber.

Kunkel “solved the cube,” and for 1986 gift-giving he repackaged the pants into a station wagon filled with 170 steel generators all welded together.

Then in 1989 the pants finally came to the end of the giving journey. Collette was inspired to encase the pants in 10,000 pounds of jagged glass. It would have been a great one but the pants were shipped to a friend in Tennessee who managed a glass manufacturing company. While molten glass was being poured over the insulated container that held the pants, an oversized chunk fractured the container transforming the pants into a pile of ashes.

The ashes were placed in brass urn and delivered to Kunkel along with the following epitaph.

“Sorry old man. Enclosed your will find what remains of our treasured pants."

The urn now graces the fireplace mantel in Kunkel’s home where it is urning its keep.

MOTIVATION

Ok, the story is a little over the top, but it can remind us that some gifts are meant to keep moving, to stay in circulation.

Chose a gift God has given you and ask HIM to help you find ways to give that gift to others. Make the next few weeks a giving season. Practice a little re-gifting. You don’t have to wrap the gift in a crushed Gremlin or encase it in concrete, just give the items new life in a new home.  

What have you been given that needs to be given?