During a season like Advent, or like Lent, I often pick up a little daily devotional book and read it regularly. It helps keep my mind at least aware of the faith-related portion of the season, and not on just the commercial focus. So on one particular day in this year's Advent devotional, the author had a little analogy that I liked.
He likened the grace of God directed toward us to electric power coming into a transforming station. At that station, the power gets "stepped down" from the incoming line to many different outgoing lines that then take it to residences and businesses, at intensities that they can handle. And as a natural result of that "step down" process, the transformer gets kind of hot. Some of the power is lost at the exchange, and it becomes heat given off by the transformer. Electricians have precise formulae for the predicted heat rise of the transformer based on the incoming vs outgoing power streams.
So, his analogy was this: God's grace is a gift to us - a gift of power in the form of blessing and faith. We are like the transformer: we encounter God's grace and power, and "step it down" when we send it along to others through acts of kindness, generosity, compassion, service, etc. And the "heat rise" that happens when we transform God's powerful grace into service and kindness to others is... gratitude, thankfulness, praise! :) We give off gratitude and thanks when we transform God's grace into acts of love for others.
During Advent, we think of God's great Gift coming to us in the Incarnation and Nativity. We are then filled with Gratitude, giving off praise and thanks, and finally it spills out of us to others in terms of Generosity.
Gift --> Gratitude --> Generosity. Transformation can (and should) happen at Christmas.
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