The Gift

We are less than one week from Christmas.  The packages beneath our tree continue to multiply…which is odd…considering that they have no mind for basic mathematics.  Yet, in any case the growing number of packages creates a marvelous sense of wonder and excitement in our home.  It was just this morning that my ears heard the squeals of glee and the high pitched words, “I am so excited, I can’t wait ‘til Christmas!”  Imagine my surprise to find that everyone was still asleep in bed…and I so rarely squeal!

I remember one Christmas Eve as a child. I lay awake in bed, wishing without end, that I could just fall asleep so that morning could all the sooner arrive.  Despite my efforts, sleep eluded me. As I remained prone and awake staring at the exposed rough cut floor joists of the unfinished ceiling in my basement bedroom, I could hear my parents filling the stockings that were hung by the weight bench with care.  Excitement built all the more…which did not help settle me into any sort of slumber. 

There was one gift above all else that I hoped for that Christmas…a keyboard.  Not the keyboard of an Apple IIe…or the Tandy 1000 that sat cumbersomely on the oversized computer desk in the dining room…but rather a keyboard that would launch me into stardom.  Ever since “Video Killed the Radio Star”, and Duran Duran graced the screen of channel 34 on my grandmother’s television, I had envisioned myself behind a keyboard pounding out the synthetic sounds of glory with my right hand and running my left hand through my thickly gelled spiked hair.

Nearing the end of the morning…there was one gift that waited to be discovered.  It was the right size…it was the right shape…and as I tore into it and found the words Yamaha, I was ecstatic!  My career was launched.  However, due to my lack of any music knowledge…training…and talent…my career ended about 45 minutes later.  Despite my abbreviated career, that gift resonates in my memory, as do many other gifts of Christmases past…although all musical memories thereafter consisted of magnetic tape and digital discs.

I came to a realization this year, as I was preparing gifts for my children to anticipate, as I had.  For thousands of years mankind anticipated that first Christmas.  Since the creation of the world…God promised a gift…a savior and then…He GAVE IT! He really gave it!

It is a gift that could never be earned…deserved…or reciprocated! It is the gift of gifts!

It is Jesus! 

Paul even says so in Ephesians 2:1-8.  “For it is by grace that you are saved, not by works…it is the gift of God!”

May you come to receive the gift of gifts this Christmas…may you come to see the Gift of God for what…and WHO it is…JESUS!