What if Christmas was about receiving a gift instead of giving one?

Do we miss the point of Christmas by giving away material gifts instead of receiving the immaterial? Do we spend so much time choosing, buying, wrapping and giving gifts that we pass by the ultimate Christmas gift? 

Our gift was chosen for us to bring us joy, peace, love and comfort, bought at a unimaginable price,  came from a place so beautiful our imagination can not fathom, and wrapped with all the tender care and love that a mother’s heart can possess. But can we receive that gift?  Have we room for it in our materialistic world? Have we time for it in our tightly scheduled lives? Or is it a gift that only appeals when we are left with no other options? 

It’s a strange gift, instead of us having to sustain and nurture it, it will sustain and nurture us. It’s a trusty friend that will never leave our side. It’s a warm and comforting hand that will lead us through our most troubling and trying times. It’s a rock solid foundation to stand on in an ever-changing troubled world. And most of all, it’s a gift.

Free.

If we only accept it. 

Merry Christmas 

The Hope that Christmas brings.

We live in a fallen, broken, hurting world. Everywhere you look you can see pride, greed, broken homes, broken hearts, hunger, disease, and finally death. Even if we win we still lose. For dust we are and to dust we shall return. 

But in Bethlehem was born a Son that tells us something new. He tells us the end is not the end. That we will rise again. That he will prepare a place for us and then come and take us there. That we will come from the east and the west, from the north and the south, and sit down at that place. A place no eye has seen, no ear heard and no human heart has imagined! A place where every tear shall be wiped from our eyes, and death shall be no more, neither shall there be mourning, nor crying, nor pain anymore, for the former things have passed away, and behold, all things will be made new. A place where there will be no more night, where we will not need the light of a lamp or the light of the sun, for the Lord God will give us light.

“For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him should not perish but have everlasting life.” John 3:16