Christmas Part 3
Another Christmas has come and gone.
All the frantic shopping is now replaced by all the manic returning. The long lines at cash registers are replaced by long lines at customer service counters with each less than delighted gift recipient sorting through gift receipts and cash register tapes as they negotiate with the harried sales clerks for a different size, a different color or a different item entirely.
The tree is still standing but it is now listing just a little and a few of the ornaments have rolled under the couch, almost as if seeking sanctuary from the kid’s mad dash to grab the brightly colored packages on Christmas morn. It was a frenzy of “oooo’s” and “ahhhh’s” and “What is its”. There are still pieces of wrapping paper and ribbon strewn about and maybe a big red bow sits silently on the coffee table. Empty boxes and packing material lie in a pile and perhaps a big plastic garbage bag sits off to the side holding the remains of all the tattered paper that once guarded the identity of the gift inside. Except for the really nice paper that mom or grandma carefully removed from their package, taking care not to rip it so it could be folded up and placed aside to use again.
It went by so quickly. Months of planning, weeks of shopping, days of wrapping and decorating and in what seems like only minutes it’s all over. But is it really done? Are you sure you opened all the gifts?
The most important gift of all on Christmas is the one that far too often goes unopened. In all the hectic frenzy of the present filled, commercial Christmas we have created we forget all about it. It is of unequalled value and has a price tag that Warren Buffet, Bill Gates and Oprah combined couldn’t pay. Because the price tag is not in dollars.
Perhaps we miss it because this gift is not wrapped in shiny paper and satin bows. It’s wrapped in swaddling cloth and surrounded by hay. The gift looks like a baby. It even sounds like a baby. But this baby is not just an infant child. This baby does not represent a promise for the future. This baby IS a promise fulfilled. He does not represent love. He IS love. This baby does not represent a new generation because this baby IS timeless and is the everlasting covenant between God and man.
This is the most important gift we can open on Christmas, but unlike the sweater that will sit in a drawer or the kid’s toys that have probably suffered irreparable damage within minutes of being opened, this gift is meant to be opened and used every single day. It is the gift the Creator bestowed upon his creation to bring them closer to Him and remove the division of imperfect man from a perfect God.
All you need to do is open it and accept it to behold the unequalled extent of God’s love.
“For God so loved the world that he gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
Kinda makes that Nintendo Wii pale by comparison, now doesn’t it?
Christmas
