The book opens with a parable: On Christmas morning one gift remains, beautiful and complex, given to all the family, but with no manual to tell how to put it together. Jesus, the Gift, comes with no divinely dictated instruction to say what his brief life and his message mean; so that, from the beginning, his followers have been offering their interpretations, sometimes sharply disagreeing. This author, with a lifetime perspective, examines and sifts together what the three synoptists, Mark, Matthew and Luke, record as remembered sayings of Jesus, listening for those moments when the Gift's own voice seems to come through.