The gift we have yet to open

In spite of the economic turmoil facing the world this Christmas, there are many blessings for which to be thankful. I remember Christmas when I was young and a sort of game my parents and grandparents used to play with us and with each other. On Christmas morning some gifts had to be reserved for last and invariably, they were always the best gifts; the biggest gifts; the gifts no one expected. Even as economies and governments stumble, we are reminded of a higher hope at Christmas that God’s plan has not failed despite our limited perspective of not having opened all the gifts.

God’s gift of His Son is in itself beyond our comprehension. That God would come to Earth as a baby is most difficult for our minds to conceptualize. That He would die to purify us from our sin is no less fantastic to our reason. That He would rise up from death is also an amazing gift of hope. These gifts foreshadow the gift that only Jesus could make possible through His willingness to sacrifice.

How often do we simply look at the packaging of the gift? It’s actually still somewhat politically correct to talk about Jesus as a baby, but the gift God gives us through His Son is so much more. The gift is a God who reaches out to us in the form of a servant; subjecting himself to the law He created so that in fulfilling the law and dying though blameless we might be able to open the greatest gift of an eternal relationship with God.

The gift of eternity in Heaven with Our Creator Father is the gift we look at under the tree and wonder what it holds while the giver smiles, knowing that it is beyond all we can ask or think.