Good Morning:
Is there someone in your family who always seems to give the best gifts? The gifts they give come as complete surprises and they always delight the one opening the gift. Perhaps you hold the title of best gift giver in the family? As we get ready for Christmas this year and the great exchange of all the presents and gifts, we’re also reminded of the many gifts that God has given us. Our Father is truly the best gift giver ever.
He began preparing our gifts thousands of years ago. He blessed Adam and Eve with a wonderful world to live in that was teeming with plant and animal life. Still today He gives us perfect warm sunny afternoons and chilly overcast days that seem to be made for a cup of hot chocolate and a bowl of soup. Each morning He blesses us with light to go about our day and each evening he gives us a calm night to rest.
One of the signs of a good gift giver is that they know what you want or need without you even realizing that you want it. Some of the best gifts we receive are the ones that we didn’t know we wanted, but a few months later we think we couldn’t live without. This rings even more true when we think about the Best Gift Giver Ever. On our own, none of us knew that we needed a Savior. We would think we were just fine without Jesus. However, now that we have been given the gift of faith in Christ we see just how much we need Him and how we truly could not live without Him. As Paul says ” For by grace you have been saved through faith, and that not of yourselves; it is the gift of God” (Ephesians 2:8).
The Best Gift Giver really did give us the best Gift ever in sending little baby Jesus down to Bethlehem so long ago. He gave us the gift of eternal life which was bought at the price of His only-begotten Son’s death on the cross. Which brings us to our last quality of a good gift giver. They have to love the person they’re giving the gift to or else the gift loses its meaning and treasure. Well our Lord loves us with the greatest love. He said so Himself in John 15:13 “Greater love has no one than this, than to lay down one’s life for his friends.” Jesus did just that so that we might have life with Him!
In Christ,
Pastor
The door was shut. The museum guide now informed the group that they were in complete and total darkness. The dark room had special doors to seal out any potential light from the outside. The dark room had no windows, lightbulbs or any other form of light. The group had been required to leave all cell phones, watches, and any other light creating device outside of the room. The room was pitch black. With no light, there was no vision. Human eyes require at least a modicum of light to see even faint shapes in the darkness. However in the dark room, there was no light and so there was no sight.
Similar to a dark room, the light of Jesus Christ can also be shut away from a person’s vision. The Apostle Paul warns of this in 2 Corinthians 4:3-4 “But even if our gospel is veiled, it is veiled to those who are perishing, whose minds the god of this age has blinded, who do not believe, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine on them.” The god of this age, Satan, systematically places blindfold after blindfold after blindfold on the eyes of unbelievers. These blindfolds hide the truth of the glory of Christ. The blindfolds which the unbelieving world willingly places on their eyes include seeking sinful temporal pleasures instead of seeing who gives us righteous eternal pleasures, worrying over the future instead of seeing who holds the future, trusting in ourselves for our salvation instead of seeing who gives us salvation, and many more.
These blindfolds can at times be placed over the believers eyes as well. When our sinful thoughts and attitudes blind us to the glory of what Christ has done and still does for us we have slipped a blindfold or two over our eyes. God removes these blindfolds for us through His powerful word which lifts us out of darkness and into His light. He brings this word to us through our daily study of it, our weekly, public worship of Him, and through our faithful fellow believers.
Ultimately, the unbelieving world does not see faith as anything worth having, but is rather blinded to the great gift of faith. Those who have never seen the light of Christ do not know what they are missing. Let us then lift off their blindfolds with the truth of God’s word and show them the light of Christ.
In Christ,
Pastor Naumann
