{"id":307648,"date":"2020-12-08T03:00:11","date_gmt":"2020-12-08T02:00:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/four-gifts-for-christmas\/"},"modified":"2024-05-15T20:41:40","modified_gmt":"2024-05-15T18:41:40","slug":"four-gifts-for-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/four-gifts-for-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Four gifts for Christmas"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><em>God does not let himself be outdone in generosity and He surprises us with His providence. This is confirmed by the experience of Urs, from Switzerland: a gesture made out of love can have many positive effects.<\/em>  I was invited to celebrate Christmas Eve with my two brothers and their wives.  I wanted to give each of them a present, but there was no money. So, I placed my wish into God&#8217;s hands.  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-238009 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Candela-Natale-512x340.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"251\" height=\"167\" \/>A few days ago, our friend Peter, a pastor in the Reformed Church, invited us to his parish community to make candles out of beeswax. It is a tradition in many places here, but I had never been involved. I went with the others to make my candle and, to my surprise, I saw that it was beautiful. I remembered that my younger brother&#8217;s wife is a candle enthusiast. The first gift was ready!  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-238011 alignleft\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Block-notes-305x340.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"196\" height=\"219\" \/>Every now and then I go and help out in a small company run by my friends, especially when they have to prepare a shipment and are under pressure. The last time I helped, a couple of weeks ago, during a break, I looked in the warehouse among the items they sell and I found a nice box full of notebooks: one a phone book, another a diary, etc &#8230; They were very beautiful. I asked the price, but it was beyond what I could afford. So, I continued preparing the shipment. It was an intense day of work. In the end I was tired, but happy to have lent a hand. When I was leaving, the person in charge gave me a bag thanking me for the help I had given during the year. I opened the bag and I was almost in tears: it was the box with those notepads. The gift for my older brother was ready!  <img alt=\"\" alt=\"\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"wp-image-238010 alignright\" src=\"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/11\/Aceto-biologico-426x340.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"254\" height=\"203\" \/>A few days ago, a friend gave me an envelope with money: He said: \u00a0&#8220;It&#8217;s for you &#8211; for your personal needs&#8221;. Since it was the day of the Christmas market in our village, I went to have a look, but the prices seemed exaggerated. Before I left, I discovered the stand of a farmer who produced organic vinegar enriched with ginger, just what my older brother&#8217;s wife likes. It was packaged in a nice little bottle and the money I received was just enough to buy it. Another little gift was ready!  When I got home, a friend tells me that he has received a leather briefcase, which he doesn&#8217;t need because he already has one and asks me if I could use it. So, I thought about my younger brother, it could be useful as he deals in consultations and estimates. Then I heard from him that, a few days before, his own had broken, so mine arrived just at the right moment!  In the end the presents were ready. A personal note was added to the gift, thanking each person for what they meant to me. \u00a0It was nice, they were very happy!  I thought I would go to the Christmas party empty-handed, but Someone thought to find me a gift for each one. <\/p>\n<p style=\"text-align: right;\"><em>collected by Gustavo E. Clari\u00e1<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>God does not let himself be outdone in generosity and He surprises us with His providence. This is confirmed by the experience of Urs, from Switzerland: a gesture made out of love can have many positive effects.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":33,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"give_campaign_id":0,"_seopress_robots_primary_cat":"","_seopress_titles_title":"","_seopress_titles_desc":"","_seopress_robots_index":"","_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-307648","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-non-categorizzato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307648","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/33"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=307648"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/307648\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=307648"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=307648"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.focolare.org\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=307648"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}