I love gifts! I enjoy receiving a well thought-out gift (especially if it is unanticipated or surprising,) but mainly I love giving thoughtful, meaningful gifts to others. I love thinking about a special person and what he or she would like to receive and I love anticipating their happiness upon receiving the gift. I am convinced that a caring gift is an expression of love-so the present itself is really not the focus-it is the love exhibited in the thinking and the choosing and the preparing that is the essence of the giving; so the love provides the significance of the gift.
Because of my experience with gift giving, I sense that at least a portion of Heavenly Father’s willingness to give us His son (who would provide us everything we needed to return to Him,) must have been motivated by the anticipation of the awe and wonder we would experience at being given such a gift–because through that gift we would glimpse the breathtaking love manifest in the thought and the preparation and the feeling necessary in the giving of it. It was His encompassing love for His children that allowed the sacrifice of a beloved Son. It was love unbounded that saw beyond the suffering and the heart break to the eternal outcome. In the giving, surely He showed us in a way unmistakable and undeniable just how grand and infinite His love really is. Love surrounds and upholds and runs through every particle of our Father’s plan for our happiness and is expressly evidenced in the person, life and mission of Jesus Christ.
HE IS THE GIFT.
He is the ‘good tidings of great joy’ heralded by heavenly messengers.
He is deliverance and redemption for a fallen and captive people.
He is light and life and hope to a dark and dying world-the everlasting truth.
He is abundance and assurance, healing and hearing. He is steadfastness and faithfulness, loyalty and purity, joy and peace.
He is the justice we often lack and the mercy we always need.
He is salvation-The Way, The Truth, The Life. Our only hope for safety and eternal life.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16
If ever words were inadequate to express the love, adoration and admiration for a gift, it would be for this gift which most deserves it. No wonder Isaiah says, “Sing, O ye heavens; for the Lord hath done it: shout, ye lower parts of the earth; break forth into singing, ye mountains, O forests and every tree therein: for the Lord hath redeemed Jacob…” (Isaiah 44:23) He is worthy of all the praise, worship and glory we can give, and every devotion large and small of every child of God and of every creation of His hand, as meager as those efforts may be. That is our small gift in return for so much.
“God be thanked for the matchless gift of His divine Son.” (The Living Christ, 3)
