The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (3 page)

Ravished with wonder.

Ravished by an even larger, bigger, more infinite Love.

So go to the window. Go to the hills, the desert, the
corner, the back door, and be ravished and taken and awed, and you who were made by Love, made for love —be still and know and watch love come down.

The answer to deep anxiety is the deep adoration of God.

And the greatest gift we can give our great God is to let His love make us glad.

Christmas begins here. The Christmas story, this love story —the whole blue marble of the world spinning right now on the Cross-beam axis of Love.

What could you create today with a gentle heart of love (a letter, a treat, a surprise)? Create something out of your love!

We must be sure of the infinite good that is done to us by our Lord Jesus Christ, in order that we may be ravished in love with our God and inflamed with a right affection to obey Him, and keep ourselves strictly in awe of Him.

JOHN CALVIN

What in this whole blue marble of God’s world causes you to pause in wonder?

What does it mean to you that you were made out of the overflow of God’s love?

Think of three people who are not easy to love. What would it look like to love those people with God’s love?

They hid from the LORD God among the trees.

GENESIS 3:8

The woman . . . saw that the tree was beautiful and its fruit looked delicious, and she wanted the wisdom it would give her. So she took some of the fruit and ate it. Then she gave some to her husband, who was with her, and he ate it, too. At that moment their eyes were opened, and they suddenly felt shame at their nakedness. So they sewed fig leaves together to cover themselves.

When the cool evening breezes were blowing, the man and his wife heard the LORD God walking about in the garden. So they hid from the LORD God among the trees. Then the LORD God called to the man, “Where are you?”

GENESIS 3:6-9

For all the wandering, this is the first question of the Old Testament —God coming to ask after you, “Where are you?”

Where are you in your life? Where are you —from Me?

To get where you want to go, the first question you always have to answer is
Where am I?

“Our fall was, has always been, and always will be, that we aren’t satisfied in God and what He gives. We hunger for something more, something other.”
[2]

The only thing that will satisfy our hunger for more is to hunger for the One who comes down to Bethlehem, house of Bread, the One who comes after us and offers Himself as Bread for our starved souls.

And for all the wondering, this is the first question of the New Testament, when the wise men come asking, “Where is he?” (Matthew 2:2).

We only find out where we are when we find out where He is. We only find ourselves . . .
when we
find Him
. We lost ourselves at one tree. And only find ourselves at another.

Wise men are only wise because they make their priority the seeking of Christ.

All our moments, all our waking —all the globe is a looking glass to God, and the wise keep seeking the presence of Christ in a thousand places, because you only come to yourself when you come to Him.

And your God, He’s coming now, everywhere, for you.

In all humanity’s religions, man reaches after God.

But in all His relationships, God reaches for man.

Reaches for you who have fallen and scraped your heart raw, for you who feel the shame of words that have snaked off your tongue and poisoned corners of your life, for you who keep trying to cover up pain with perfectionism.

Three words come through the dense thicket of failure:
Where are you?

Your God refuses to give up on you.

Your God looks for you when you’re feeling lost, and your God seeks you out when you’re down, and your God calls for you when you feel cast aside. He doesn’t run down the rebel. He doesn’t strike down the sinner. He doesn’t flog the failure.

Spurgeon writes that no matter what the day holds, how the season unfolds, God holds and enfolds: “I am come to find you wherever you may be. I will look for you till the eyes of My pity see you. I will follow you till the hands of My mercy reach you, and I will still hold you . . . to My heart.”
[3]

And that moment when your heart turns to His heart —already turned to you?

The Fall turns into a falling into His everlasting arms (Deuteronomy 33:27).

Jesus is calling for you: “Where are you?” Sing a worship song or Christmas carol (or two or three), and invite Him to come and be with you.

When the year dies in preparation for the birth

Of other seasons, not the same, on the same earth,

Then saving and calamity go together make

The Advent gospel, telling how the heart will break.

Therefore it was in Advent that the Quest began.

C. S. LEWIS

What would you say if God called out to you now, “Where are you?”

What does it mean to you that God seeks you out and finds you when you are far from Him?

What places deep within your soul do you long for the Lord to seek out during this season of Advent?