In the Christmas story, the wise men bring gifts to the Lord: gold, frankincense and myrrh.

The gold is listed first, because it is the inmost - signifying good, e.g. the good that we do when we love the Lord and the neighbor.

The frankincense is next. It signifies rational truth, which is the set of true ideas that we know, not about external things like cars or cooking, but about what is really good, and what is really true.

These rational truths are built on earlier knowledges that we learn, before we have really made them our own. Those early knowledges about spiritual things - often learned in childhood - are represented by the myrrh.

In a way, these gifts are really a reciprocation. We can't actually give them to the Lord until the Lord has given them to us. We necessarily start out by learning and doing the Lord's law (myrrh). The Lord can then call up those memories to become rational truths (frankincense). Then, over time, and with effort, those truths can be transformed into good (gold). The wise men from the East had gone through this process of learning and becoming vessels that could receive truths and goods. They were able to perceive the Lord's birth, and find him, and bring gifts to him.

10200. 'Morning by morning' means whenever a state of love in clearness exists. This is clear from the meaning of 'morning' as a time when a state of love in clearness exists, dealt with in 10134, so that 'morning by morning' or every single morning means whenever that state exists. It has been shown several times before that in heaven states of love and light, that is, of goodness and truth, follow one another in sequence unceasingly, just as on earth morning, midday, evening, and twilight do, and as spring, summer, autumn, and winter do. It has also been shown that those states are the origin from which these times of day and seasons of the year arise; for things that come into being in the world are images of the realities that exist in heaven. This is so because everything natural comes into being from what is spiritual, that is, from what is Divine in the heavens. From this it is evident what the variations of the states in heaven are like, for one comes to know what they are by comparison with the states of heat and light that exist in the world, heat in the heavens being the good of love coming from the Lord and the light there being the truth of faith coming from the Lord. States there follow one another in this kind of way to the end that angels may constantly grow more perfect; for as they pass through those states they experience all varieties of goodness and truth and are endowed with them. The differences furthermore in the varieties of the good of love and truth of faith there are like the differences of heat and light in all the particular regions or climates of the planet; that is to say, those near the equator are different from those further away in either direction from it, and they are different from one day to the next, and from one year to the next. What is exactly similar or the same does not ever return; for it has been provided that nothing shall ever be exactly the same, neither in the spiritual world nor in the natural world; and this enables perfection to increase constantly.