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The Ultimate Christmas Gift part 1
[audio:xmasgift1.mp3|titles=The Ultimate Christmas Gift part 1|artists=Christian St John]
Over the next couple of week’s I will be focusing my Faithblog’s on Christmas. More specifically, I will be looking at The Gift that God has given us all, a gift I like to call the ultimate Christmas gift.
Let me ask a question: Who doesn’t like the Christmas season? I know there are some Grinch’s out there, but for most of us this is a special time of year. We have parties, family gatherings, lots of good food and drink, TV Christmas specials and movies, Christmas carols, cards and gifts in their plenty.
This Christmas most of us, if we’re fortunate, will get at least a few Christmas presents. We’ll get things that are useful and some things that are simply stocking fillers. But let me ask a question… How do you measure the value of a gift? How do you judge its worth? By its size? By its weight? Do you judge it by its cost, or perhaps by its usefulness?
If I ask each of you what your ultimate gift would be I’m sure I would get many differing answers. For some it may be a Playstation 3 or a Nintendo Wii, for others it may be a new bike or fishing rod or widescreen TV.
Think about it, the ultimate Christmas gift… what would it be for you?
“God loved the world so much that he gave his one and only Son so that whoever believes in him may not be lost, but have eternal life.” John 3:16 – NCV. This is a verse that many of us know by heart, but for some of us it’s really lost its meaning.
Over the next five Faithblog’s I would like to examine the ultimate Christmas gift… God’s gift to us. The majority of people around us, our family, friends, work colleagues, really have no idea what Christmas is really all about. If you’re not sure about this, ask them. For many it’s a time of year when we have parties, give gifts to one another, and an excuse to have a couple of days off from work.
However, for the believer this should be a special time of year. Why? Because it is this time of year when we take the time to celebrate the birth of the messiah, the savior of the world, our ultimate Christmas gift from God.
I love Christmas carols and songs and for about 2 weeks now I have been listening to plenty of them. One of those songs is “Mary’s Boy Child” by Boney M. I love the lyrics of this song, “Mary’s boy child Jesus Christ was born on Christmas day.” I know all you scholars out there would argue that he wasn’t born on 25th December and so on, but listen to what they sing next, “Man will live forever more, because of Christmas day.”
There’s no doubt about it this is a special time of year, not because we have some really way out parties and get some really neat gifts, but because of the one we celebrate at this time of year.
“This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God. My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other.” 1 John 4:9-11 (MSG)
Join me next time as I continue to look at the ultimate Christmas gift and how we can begin to measure it’s worth to us.
Christian St John M.Div, BChM, ACS
December, 2008
Picture by Charles Thompson
Christian…thanks for posting this! Sometimes I forget how much Jesus means to me. When I read the words you wrote “..it is the time of year when we take the time to celebrate the birth of the messiah, the Savior of the world, our ultimate Christmas gift from God..” I became so emotional, I almost started to BAWL! God bless you!
I too get all emotional when I really count the cost of what it cost the Father to send his Son into this world as a gift for us all and what this gift means to me.