I often wonder where the custom of exchanging gifts came
from as it is tied to the celebration of the Birth of Christ. Maybe in honor of the greatest gift ever
given to the world, we make a pitiful attempt of our own to commemorate
it? Or perhaps since Jesus is no longer
available in the flesh to us, we give gifts to each other in His place? But if this is so, then perhaps we should not
give to those we know, but to those in need – that would seem to be more
Christian than the current practice.
Nonetheless, it cannot take away from the present I was given this
year. Ecstasy wrapped in a rather plain
wrapper, a no frills packaging, I guess you could call it.
The present was not even kept under our tree this year. Strangely it was kept in the bathroom, my
bathroom to be precise. Strange place
for a gift I imagine; particularly since I do tend to be spending more and more
time in there these days as I get older.
The wrapping paper was red and black, with gold trim, but there was no
bow to speak of. And no really clear tag
of who it was from, it seems as though several folks who care about me got
together on this gift and each made their own contribution.
Most guys I know would love a HUGE flat screen TV in full
1080p high definition, with a surround sound BluRay player to go with it. My gift was better than that. Other folks I know would love a new computer
with dual quad processors and 20 terabytes of hard disk storage running a 64
bit OS. My gift contained more
capability, more speed, and is more reliable than that. Some guys I know would settle for something
ornate to wear on their wrists, a new Rolex or Omega perhaps with rose colored
gold bracelet, and a meteorite face place.
My gift is more accurate than that, and worth far more.
When you think about all the things you have collected and
received in your life, you can conjure up some fond memories. But most of the things in your life tend to
get old, fade, and ultimately lose their value.
I’ll grant you it takes much longer for a watch to lose utility than a
new computer, but the truism still holds.
The relationships you have in your life can be much longer lasting, and
more rewarding, but they too are impacted by the effects of evil and self
interest. Some relationships expire due
to these two inexorably bound concepts; so even memories of people and of your
interactions are sometimes limited in scope and length.
There is however a gift that can last a lifetime and
more. It comes like everything else of
an infinite nature from the source of all infinite gifts. Beyond the gift of Salvation, which is our
only road home; beyond the gift of our Savior’s birth, which was the miracle
that began the enactment of our Salvation is a gift of truth in a world of
half-lies, darkness, deception, and despair.
The present I unwrapped was packaged in my Bible, it’s now faded red
cover, gold trim, and black ink reached out and took hold of my heart. A common text, a common memory verse every
child learns, a billboard held up at NFL football games by a clown in a
brightly colored wig – John 3:16. “For
God so loved the world, He gave His only Son …”
So many new truths jumped out at me from this old text of
scripture. First, was WHO God
loved. It says God loved the “world”;
NOT God loved those who professed faith in Him.
God does not love ONLY those who say they love Him, He loved every
single life on planet earth, every single human who has ever lived regardless
of their status in the faith. The world
is God’s enemy and yet God follows His own advice and truly loves His
enemy. The world takes from God without
so much as a thank you. And God’s
response was to give it more and more, and finally everything in the form of
His Son.
I cannot even begin to imagine, WHY God loves the
world. It is certainly NOT because the
world deserves His love. We have done
nothing to earn love, rather we have done much to earn punishment and
contempt. We are known for our hatred of
each other, more than our generosity. We
do little to honor our example of love and much to destroy it completely. So the question of WHY God loves His enemy
must be answered only in the definition of love itself. Perhaps as a parent loves a child because
they are biologically connected. Even
when the child has mis-behaved, or like in our case, has contracted a fatal
debilitating disease that impairs judgment and inflicts pain on everyone
around. Maybe only in this was can we
begin to comprehend WHY.
Regardless of WHY remains the FACT that God does love us. Love that holds nothing back. Love that defines happiness. Love that is eternal. We have been looking through blinded eyes, at
blurry images, with distorted sound for so so long. Our vision is worse that our old TV’s not
even the black and whites were this badly deformed. But for so long the devil has made us think
that God had nothing good to offer us; and sin and evil were the fun things,
the cool things, the only things were having.
He was putting poop on our plates and calling it caviar. And like idiots we were eating it by the
handful. But when our vision is
corrected, when we open our eyes for the first time without our disease
impacting our sight, the truth becomes clear.
We have relied on the wisdom of men, and on our
technological prowess, substituting the simple wisdom of God, for the complex
situational ethics of evil. We hope for
Google to have our answers, and our hard drives to have the capacity to store
them. But the simplest of people, the
lowest of IQ’s is able to grasp the simple concept in action of love. It is God’s love for us His enemy that can
boggle the mind, and make meaningless our technical accomplishments. We need no answers beyond a love that would
give us EVERYTHING. We need no search
engine to define the meaning of sacrifice that would offer us EVERYTHING and
demand in exchange nothing. God offers
us complete release from our pain, and our evil, as nothing more than a gift.
This truth is ecstasy.
It cannot be taken away. It
cannot be changed. It cannot dull over
the years but in fact only gain in strength over the years. It’s meaning and its definition only continue
to become clearer and more in focus as we experience the transformational love
of our Savior. To realize that God only
ever wishes to offer us ecstasy on a level we are hardly ready to experience;
there is nothing more under my tree that can move me like this. There is nothing under heaven as important or
meaningful to me as this. Truth is worth
more than any lie ever told. It is worth
more than the entirety of man’s ‘wisdom’.
It is not just a matter of faith to me, but a matter of fact to me. For I can see no other transformational power
in all the universe, that is at work in the lives of men to redeem them from
the pain they are diseased with, than that of our Lord Jesus Christ. Happy birthday to our God [belated as it may
be] and thank YOU for a gift of sheer ecstasy that continues to warm my very
soul.
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