The Gifts of Christmas

 Did you ever receive a bicycle as a gift?   Perhaps a shiny, red Schwinn bicycle, maybe with a basket on the front.  It was a beautiful sight!   But the bike alone was not the only gift.  Along with it came the freedom to go to new places, to go faster, without having to walk.

The gift included the freedom to ride with all your other friends who had bikes.  

So, too, the gift of Christmas is for all who believe.  The birth of a Savior,  One who will rescue us from our sins and the penalty we have incurred.  The baby in the manger is a gift of untold beauty and cost.  He is our freedom, our forgiveness.  Without Him, we are lost. 

With Him, we are found.   But, do not stop with the baby in the manger.  He is so much more, the gift, like the bicycle, is deeper and more faceted.  Take time to see what this incredible gift gives us. 

 

For the first element of the Gift, see that it is a promise kept. An ancient promise, made in Eden to two rebellious souls.  The promise of a rescue, the promise of a second chance.   What does a promise kept mean for us?  It means a Promise Keeper,  a God whose word is trustworthy, an honorable and truthful God.  We see in the gift of the Savior, the reality that God has the power to do what He says He will do.  We see that God means what He says. We see that God is reliable.  

Secondly, we see that this Gift of heaven gives us a new home, a new citizenship. Our native land is now changed.  We are a people who have been rescued from a realm of darkness and transferred to a kingdom of light.   Because of this,we have a new allegiance, a new priority.  We belong to a new country, a country of light and joy.  A country ruled by a King who spent Himself to gather us to Himself. 

In being transferred to this new status we must leave behind the old.  The old ways of doing things, the old ways of thinking.  They find no place in this new Kingdom, indeed they are useless here. 

Thirdly, we are filled to completeness in the Person  of our Savior.  Once rescued, we are included in Christ.  He is our leader.  But He is also our righteousness, our wisdom, our wholeness.  We are filled, we are complete.  Who among us does not strive to be finished, completed, at rest.  All these are ours in our Savior, that small baby in a manger.  

There are so many more of these gifts, facets to the glorious gift of Jesus.  It is wise to unwrap this gift thoughtfully.  We are wise to patiently explore it and  so to appreciate it.  We are wise to be grateful for this breathtaking gift from the God Who seeks us out.   For it is truly our life, our peace and our joy. 

Beauty

 

Some winter mornings, the sunshine reflects brilliantly off the ice clad branches of the bare trees across the river.  It is an absolutely beautiful sight.  The combination of sunlight, ice and bare branches is a wonderful sight in a sometimes rather hostile season.  Indeed, the beauty of it is a gift, a joy to behold.  Unless there is no God then it is simply the material phenomenon of light, water in a frozen state and the DNA driven operation of the human eye.  The beauty of the scene does not exist if there is not a creator who designed it. 

My reaction to the sight is, at its most basic, the operation of DNA controlled functions in my flesh.  Chemicals interacting with cells, the retina in my eye taking in the light, the photons,  and my brain interpreting the sight to make some sort of sense of it.  Beauty is not in the chemical equation.  Chemistry has no part in beauty.

But, you say, it is beautiful to me;  there is no need to get religious and bring up God.  My response is to ask which part of your cells or DNA defines beauty?  How did you discover what beauty is, how do you determine it?  Why is beauty even important if all we are is a mass of chemicals and electrical impulses?  And if by some chemical reaction, you do determine what beauty is, who should I listen to your opinion?  What makes your DNA more qualified to decide on the defination of beauty than my DNA?

Without an objective standard, a definition from beyond our brains, we are left to make all kinds of determinations that are purely subjective, that are of no transcendent value.  We like what we like and nobody can tell us different.   These determinations come and go with a regularity that is marked.  They change with the years, with the culture, with the people who are in charge.  Beauty, justice, goodness and kindness are all undefined concepts that simply float around in our conversations without meaning.  Beauty is whatever we want it to be, justice is what we want, when we want it, without consequences to us.  Goodness and kindness are traits or actions that serve to further my wants and my life.

All these ideas are empty of meaning if it is simply each person deciding what is meant by the words and concepts.  We can gather a group of like minded people who will all agree on a definition, but that does not make it so.  If you doubt that, look at some of the current displays of modern art.  Many modern people consider the piece of sculpture titled "Comedian" to be a fine example of modern art, a thing of import.  In reality, it is a ripe banana duct taped to a wall.  It sold for $120,00.00.  Was it beautiful, was it important?  Apparently, some people thought so.

The complication we face is that our hearts yearn for beauty.  Whether it is a brilliant winter morning or a painting by Da Vinci, we are moved by beauty, we search for it, and we find pleasure in it.  Our hearts also yearn for justice, we abhor injustice when we see it and are moved to action.  Goodness and kindness are sweet to our souls, and without them life is dry and barren.  But these exist only in a world that comes with and through a Creator, with God.   These ideas require a Mind to create them, to define them and to give to us the ability to experience them.  Without a creator everything is merely an accident, a chance happening.  Even a lovely morning in winter.  Beauty is the evidence of something beyond the material world.  It is evidence of a deep realizations that there is meaning and truth that exist outside of us.  It is evidence that life is more than a random collision of atoms.  Because there is a Creator who paints the trees with ice and shines his burning sunlight on it, we see the world in a new and exquisite way.  Because there is a Creator displaying His work for all to see, we know that
beauty is the fingerprint of God in this world.