The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (21 page)

What do you need to lay down so your hands will be open to receive God’s Gift?

How does it change Christmas for you to know that Jesus did it for love?

Take a moment to kneel close at the manger, thanking God for His abundance.

The Savior —yes, the Messiah, the Lord —has been born today!

LUKE 2:11

“The Savior —yes, the Messiah, the Lord —has been born today in Bethlehem, the city of David! And you will recognize him by this sign: You will find a baby wrapped snugly in strips of cloth, lying in a manger.”

Suddenly, the angel was joined by a vast host of others —the armies of heaven —praising God and saying,

     “Glory to God in highest heaven,

          and peace on earth to those with whom God is pleased.” . . .

[The shepherds] hurried to the village and found Mary and Joseph. And there was the baby, lying in the manger. After seeing him, the shepherds told everyone what had happened and what the angel had said to them about this child. All who heard the shepherds’ story were astonished, but Mary kept all these things in her heart and thought about them often.

LUKE 2:11-19

The heavens dome different this day, the light all different.

The glory’s rising —glory to God in the highest heaven, and peace on earth, because God has left the glory of the galaxies and come down to our depths.

God is here! God is here! Christ is born to
you
, to
you
! The glad tidings are to
you
, to
you
!

It’s like you can hear the beating of angel wings over Bethlehem —a whole vast host —as if the sky lifts with a light that isn’t of the sun or of the stars or of this world.

Angels leaned in near the mystery so large that has become the Babe so small, and they caught Light, like catching fire.

One star hovered too close to the infinite God-become-infant and combusted bright.

And the flame of it all grazed the shepherds up on the hills, and they blazed, full of wonder, to the source —to the stable where the star seemed dim in the incarnated brilliance of the Light of the World.

God, divine Light, tabernacles Himself in skin and lights the darkness of men.

Jesus left the starry heavens to save us from our sins.

This day, this night —this is the time of the awed silence.

Now, a thousand thousand trees dance with light.

Now, a thousand thousand gifts carry love.

Now, at the foot of every tree, we are all only recipients of grace.

Christ, who called all things into being, gives you sun and moon and stars, the earth under you and the sky over you, and this ocean of air for every breath that fills every lung of every living thing —to you, to you, to you!
We live in an ocean of grace. Gifts are our air.

And when we sinned and weren’t satisfied with what God gives, as if we refused to breathe air and died, when we longed for something different, something more, something better, He came and
gave us Himself
.

Am I enough?

Jesu, joy of man’s desiring.

Love birthed Himself and births us life.

I’ll take your broken heart and give you My warmed one; I’ll take your broken body and give you My fresh Spirit; I’ll take your burden-broken back and give you weightlessness.

Take Me? Let Me be your enough? Always now, no matter what —let Me be your enough.

You can have this as the best Christmas ever as much as you gaze into your Father’s face and receive His gift.

“Only He who has experienced it can believe what the love of Jesus Christ is,” whispers the pen of Bernard of Clairvaux.

A heart could burn with a love like this.

The whole of the journey, the whole of the Scriptures, is of Him. “Did not our hearts burn within us?” (Luke 24:32, ESV).

This day, this night, the Light comes, and whose heart isn’t kindled by this Love that’s a wildfire? The shepherds got angels, were lit by the angels. Everyone else that night got shepherds, heard the news from kindled, heart-burning shepherds who went and “told everyone.” When your heart burns, you’re a flaming match for other hearts. When you’re a manger tramp who came with nothing but your ragged heart and leaned in close over that crèche, when you’ve beheld His glory, the white heat of a Love like this —who doesn’t tramp out of the manger and into the world with a heart glowing like hot embers in your chest?

A heart like this could catch the world on fire.

Christ came into the world for you —and you came into the world for Him.

The world will be still tonight.

There will be lingering. Longing. We will long for this wonder to all go on. One Christmas candle will flame in the quiet. This cannot fade —none of this can ever fade. “For unto us a Child is born, unto us a Son is given” (Isaiah 9:6, NKJV).
God is with us.

God stays with us.

The Christmas candle burns hot, gives its light, gives its Light —and the world lights up, and Christmas goes on forever now.

Christ, the always Gift for all our days.

Notes

[1]
John Calvin, quoted in William J. Bouwsma,
John Calvin: A Sixteenth-Century Portrait
(New York: Oxford University Press, 1988), 103.

[2]
Ann Voskamp,
One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are
(Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 2010), 15.

[3]
Charles Spurgeon, “God’s First Words to the First Sinner” (sermon, Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, England, October 6, 1861),
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons07.lvii.html
.

[4]
Nicholas Wolterstorff,
Lament for a Son
(Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1987), 90.

[5]
Charles Spurgeon, “Abraham’s Double Blessing” (sermon, Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, England, November 8, 1885),
http://www.ccel.org/ccel/spurgeon/sermons43.xxvi.html
.

[6]
Dwight L. Moody
, The Way to God
(New York: Cosimo, Inc., 2005), 53.

[7]
G. K. Chesterton,
Orthodoxy
(New York: Simon & Brown, 2012), 163.

[8]
Voskamp,
One Thousand Gifts
, 161.

[9]
Chesterton,
Orthodoxy
, 121.

[10]
Elisabeth Elliot,
Love Has a Price Tag: Inspiring Stories That Will Open Your Heart to Life’s Little Miracles
(Ventura, CA: Regal Books, 2005), 206.

[11]
Thomas Watson,
A Divine Cordial; the Saint’s Spiritual Delight; the Holy Eucharist; and Other Treatises
(The Religious Tract Society, 1846), 68.

[12]
The Christian Armor with Illustrative Selections in Prose and Poetry
(Boston: The American Tract Society, 1865), 133.

[13]
John Owen,
Hebrews
. The Crossway Classic Commentaires, edited by Alister McGrath and J. I. Packer (Wheaton, IL: Crossway Books, 1998), 234.

[14]
Voskamp,
One Thousand Gifts
, 203.

[15]
Jonathan Edwards,
The Works of Jonathan Edwards
, vol. 1 (New York: Daniel Appleton and Co., 1835), 664.

[16]
Amy Carmichael,
Edges of His Ways: Daily Devotional Notes
(Fort Washington, PA: CLC Publications, 2011), 82.

[17]
C. S. Lewis,
The Great Divorce
(New York: HarperCollins, 2001), 83.

[18]
G. K. Chesterton,
Tremendous Trifles
(New York: Dodd, Mead and Company, 1920), vi.

[19]
Carl Sagan,
Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space
(New York: Ballantine Books, 1997), 7.

[20]
Ibid.

[21]
Dr. Timothy J. Keller, “Fire on the Mountain” (sermon, Redeemer Presbyterian Church, New York City, September 19, 1999),
http://sermons.redeemer.com/store/index.cfm?fuseaction=product.display&product_ID=17335&ParentCat=6
.

[22]
C. S. Lewis,
Mere Christianity
(New York: HarperCollins, 1980), 28.

[23]
J. R. R. Tolkien,
On Fairy-Stories
, edited by Verlyn Flieger and Douglas A. Anderson (New York: HarperCollins, 2008), 75, 78.

[24]
J. R. R. Tolkien,
The Return of the King
(New York: Del Rey, 2012), 246.

[25]
Arthur T. Pierson,
George Müller of Bristol
(Peabody, MA: Hendrickson Publishers, 2008), 404.

[26]
Charles Spurgeon, “A People Prepared for the Lord” (sermon, Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington, England, March 13, 1887),
http://www.spurgeon.org/sermons/2404.htm
.

[27]
Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
A Testament to Freedom: The Essential Writings of Dietrich Bonhoeffer,
edited by Geffrey B. Kelly and F. Burton Nelson (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), 185–86.

[28]
John Wesley, quoted in David L. Larsen,
The Evangelism Mandate: Recovering the Centrality of Gospel Preaching
(Grand Rapids, MI: Kregel Publications, 1992), 155.

[29]
“History: John Wesley, Charles Wesley,”
Westminster Abbey,
http://www.westminster-abbey.org/our-history/people/john-wesley,-charles-wesley
.