Every Christmas the problem seems to get a little worse. Either our Christmas tree is shrinking or the stack of presents is growing.
And every year it’s the same. This year won’t be any different. Out of all those presents, one or two will be treasured long after all the others are used up, worn out, broken, or forgotten.
Why is this so? Why do certain gifts mean so much more to us than the others?
Answering these questions about the gifts we give each other may give us fresh understanding of why God’s gift of Jesus so far outshines all the other blessings he has given humanity.
Would you agree that the gifts we prize the most are those with a personal touch?
Years ago, when my youngest son was a first-grader, he gave me a combination stamp-holder/postage scale. He had watched me write and stamp dozens of letters daily, so he selected a gift just right for me. That dinky made-in-Hong-Kong trinket was functionally useless, but it occupied a special place on my desk for several years. It reminded me of my son’s thoughtful love.
Every Christmas the angels remind us of God’s personalized love as they sing, “To you is born this day a Savior.”
Occasionally a gift can be measured by what it costs. Those rare, extravagant presents that startle us by their costliness we never forget.
Thirty years ago, back before anti-fur freaks destroyed a whole industry, a friend of mine gave his wife a full-length mink coat for Christmas. It cost a fortune. Far more than they could afford. Which is precisely why she liked it so much!
So it is that Christians, grateful for Jesus, pray, “Thanks be to God for his priceless gift!”
When I was a kid, the gifts we valued most of all were the just-what-I-needed variety.
Unless you were poor you wouldn’t understand. But I can assure you that pants without patches put joy into January long after Christmas was over.
Can you imagine a gift any of us needs more than the blood of Jesus?
This Christmas as we exchange gifts with those we love, let us give thanks to God. In Jesus he gave us the best gift of all.