We send ’em. We get ’em. We love ’em. We hate ’em.
Christmas letters.

You know: the photocopied laundry list of Great Achievements that are folded inside Christmas cards and usually make most of us feel like abject failures. (“Kent finally passed the bar and Millicent is volunteering in Malaysia and Trip may finally have cracked the genetic code to cure cancer. Meantime, our madcap life goes on and we count our blessings…”)

But I got a letter from an old high school acquaintance the other day that actually had something more to offer:

My year of learning, the trials and tragedies of 2009, involved water. In May, my upstairs tenant’s pipe under the sink blew causing a major flood in the front of my building and $20K in damage. The repairs took 3 months. I was traumatized when it happened in the middle of the night, my entire living room raining water…

…What is the lesson for me? We dream of water when we’re overwhelmed. Water pours in the sides of our dreams, where we barely skim the surface, water that appears to drown us, of all manner and color. Jesus Christ walked on water. His disciples couldn’t master that due to their own lack of faith. And there it is. If Christ learned to walk over water, we have to learn to walk over our own water. Use faith to navigate over the obstacles that block or threaten to drown you. To walk on your own water is to subdue your own to storm, to calm it. When you cannot be cleansed by the water and events that surround you, rise above and continue on…”

I think that may be a gift much more valuable than the card it came in.