There’s pressure in buying Christmas gifts. There, I said it. I know no one else has ever realized this before me just now, but it’s tough.
Do I get the thing that’s on everyone’s “Best of 2017” lists? Or do I get the thing that’s 60% off, thanks to Cyber Monday? What about gifts for a loved one?
We put this pressure on ourselves because gifts are synonymous with Christmas, and they often replicate what the gifter thinks of the giftee. We want to portray our care for someone with a material item that conveys how much we love them. This is difficult.
Now consider God.
No one thinks more highly of us than the Lord.
We become incredibly preoccupied with the gift-giving season. There are plenty of us who spend hours and hours searching for sales, building wish lists and struggling to wrap seemingly-unwrappable gifts, all to properly convey how much someone means to us.
For Christmas, God sent us a savior — his own son — so we could escape the grasp of death and, instead, spend eternity in his kingdom.
What if we spent that same effort recognizing how God did just that, summarizing what he thinks of us with the gifting of a savior?
We desperately need to acknowledge God’s voice calling into motion the birth of a savior because of our desperate need for one. Instead of worrying about what each person is going to think about the gifts you give them, we must remember the gift of eternal life God gave us when offered up his son to live, die and be resurrected.
As we continue to learn how to Fear Not in our current sermon series, think about the ways in which God intimately thought of you — and you specifically — when he sent Christ to be born, knowing that in doing so, he perfectly communicated our worth — something no other gift could ever match.