Beyond the Wish List

December has a way of inviting us to make lists.

Some are practical — groceries, gifts, end-of-year loose ends. Others are softer and harder to name: hopes, longings, quiet wishes we barely admit to ourselves. We tuck them somewhere behind the wrapping paper and the polite smiles.

I’ve been noticing how easy it is to hand God a wish list this time of year.

If only this could change.
If only this could be healed.
If only this Christmas could feel lighter, simpler, more complete.

But Advent keeps whispering a different invitation.

Not what do you want?
But what are you ready to receive?

Because the gift God gives at Christmas isn’t a fulfilled wish — it’s His nearness. Not answers wrapped neatly in certainty, but presence wrapped in flesh and breath and vulnerability. Emmanuel doesn’t arrive to tick boxes. He arrives to stay.

And sometimes that’s the harder gift.

It asks us to loosen our grip on outcomes and open our hands instead. To allow God to meet us not at the end of the story we hoped for, but right in the middle of the one we’re actually living.

Beyond the wish list, there is a quieter offering.

A God who draws close without fixing everything first.
A love that doesn’t wait for the right conditions.
A light that enters the room even when the furniture hasn’t been rearranged.

This Christmas, maybe the most honest prayer isn’t please give me…

But help me notice You here.

And maybe that is more than enough.