A Most Generous Gift
It is the season of gift giving! We are thinking of those we love and what we can give to them. We are looking for gifts that will bless them and let them know how much we love and appreciate them. Our children are searching the toy catalogues and watching Saturday morning cartoons with careful attention to craft their Christmas wish list and it is our delight to see their joy when they unwrap what they have anticipated receiving.
Our Father also thoughtfully planned His gift to us, a gift to show us his deep love and affection, a gift to rescue and bring us near, and it is His delight to see us fully unwrap and live in His gift of grace. For hundreds of years many also anticipated the moment this gift would come.
“God has given each one of us a special gift of grace through the generosity of Christ.” Eph 4:7
I know that we speak of grace a lot, and many of us have heard a number of times within the Christian circle that grace means God’s unmerited favor, which is absolutely true but Biblically speaking it has another less popular definition. “Grace is the spirit of God operating in humans to regenerate or strengthen them.” When we feel too weak or empty to do the next thing and call out to God in our neediness and He meets us, that is grace. When we do what we know was not possible in own strength or in our own wisdom, that is grace.
Tis the season of joy, and true joy comes to us in our awareness of this gift of grace. Gratitude and grace have a very close relationship. In fact in the Greek language that the New Testament was written in grace is “charis” and it is the root of word for gratitude “eucharist”. “Gratitude is a feeling that comes uncoerced in the heart, a good feeling like happiness or delight. It isn’t directed towards the gift but towards the giver, in direct proportion to how undeserved we feel the gift is.”
We don’t work for grace. Grace is given. We don’t deserve grace, but it is God’s delight to give it anyway. There is no naughty list that keeps you from receiving his grace. It was the generosity of Christ to give up heaven and give up comfort and pay with his life to offer grace.
God gave me a picture of myself recently to help me understand His gift of grace. I was on a stage with what looked like my old Brownie sash on with all the badges I had earned for good deeds and I was excited to be receiving my next badge. I was looking to him puffing out my chest with all my Christian good deed badges to see if I had earned enough yet. He removed the sash and tossed it aside and told me Christ had already done the only deed needed to earn me all of his love and affection.
As our children open our gifts this Christmas they will not tell the gift itself how much they like it and are so glad they got it, but they will look to us with excitement, joy and gratitude for what they received. Let us do the same this season let us take our gaze off the gifts and look to the Giver to give gratitude
2015/12/04 at 3:06 pm