12 Shopping Days til Christmas
"Are you ready for Christmas?" the store clerk asked last week.
Seeing bread, milk, and nothing gift-like in my basket, she mistook me for one of those early birds who has everything bought and wrapped by the day after Thanksgiving. Only in my imagination.
"Have you done all your shopping?" a friend asked the other day.
"You mean have I started shopping?" My rhetorical response told her I still had a long list to go.
Some of us have problems deciding what to buy our loved ones. We want the gifts to please them, but also be something they can use long after the wrapping paper and ribbons. Ready or not, the stores steadily countdown the days until Christmas. In all the stress and flurry, it's good to know Someone already bought us the best gifts of all.
Scripture says God gives us every good and perfect gift (James 1:17). He proved it by sending His Son Jesus to become our Savior. The King stepped
down from heaven and was born in an out building, where donkeys, cows,
and sheep took shelter from the cold. We read how wise men from the East arrived later with gifts for their new born King, but He's the one who brought the real gifts.
"And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us and we beheld His
glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father, full of grace and truth" (John 1:14).
God, in His baffling love for mankind, sent His beloved Son to spend His first night in a manger. As a man, Jesus walked thousands of miles on dusty roads proclaiming the grace of God to a people who for the most part rejected it. He revealed truth, yet many chose to keep living in the darkness of lies. Even so, Jesus continues to offer us the gifts of grace and truth.
So it's okay if the sweaters don't fit and they've already read those books.
The DVD's, under the tree, may not be the ones they'd like to get. Yet Jesus
still brings grace and truth. The more we learn and accept these treasures,
the more we'll realize that His gifts are priceless and precious.
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