The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (4 page)

Noah found favor with the LORD.

GENESIS 6:8

The LORD observed the extent of human wickedness on the earth, and he saw that everything they thought or imagined was consistently and totally evil. So the LORD was sorry he had ever made them and put them on the earth. It broke his heart. And the LORD said, “I will wipe this human race I have created from the face of the earth. Yes, and I will destroy every living thing —all the people, the large animals, the small animals that scurry along the ground, and even the birds of the sky. I am sorry I ever made them.” But Noah found favor with the LORD.

GENESIS 6:5-8

In the midst of Advent, with the swags of cedar on porches and the lights twisted up streetlights, the headlines still spray across the face of the earth. They tear us open, and the world floods with pain.

God feels with us.

“His heart was filled with pain” (Genesis 6:6, NIV).

God has a heart . . .
and it hurts. It hurts with what hurts us.
His heart hurts not just with a few drops of ache, not just with a slow drip of sadness —the whole expanse of His heart fills, swells, weighs dark with this storm of pain.

And God whispers close to us in a hurting world. A mother whose heart is bound to her child’s? That doesn’t compare to how your Father’s heart is bound to you (Isaiah 49:15).

How did we ever find ourselves with the gift of finding favor with God?

God, who hung the stars —He has taken a thread of His heart and tied it to yours. And He didn’t need to, but God tied His heart to yours so when you feel pain, He
fills
with pain.

“The tears of God are the meaning of history,” writes American philosopher Nicholas Wolterstorff.
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When sin effectively ended our time with God in the Garden, God could have effectively ended all time in the world.

But history and time still unfold —
gifts
 —because God chooses tears.

The Flood was the flood of God’s grief, and the essence of time is the tears of God.

Time only continues on in this impossibly suffering world
because God Himself is willing to keep suffering the impossible with us.

While other creeds endeavor to get us out of the world and into heaven, in Christianity, heaven comes down and Christ comes into this world
to get us.
To suffer with us. We find favor —only because
Christ feels pain.

Christ comes like an ark, like a cradle over floods. And we read the headlines and wonder,
If there’s a God who really cares, He’d look at this world and His heart would break.

And God looks to the Cross, that real Tree, and says, “My heart did.”

On that Cross, they speared His side and pierced straight into His heart, filled with pain, and it was the water and blood of His broken heart that gushed right out, a flood of love.

It’s the quantum physics of God: one broken heart always breaks God’s in
two.

God’s heart breaks.
Breaks in two —to let us into the ark of His love.

Every flood of stress is an invitation to get into the ark of our Savior.

Every flood of trouble remakes the topography of our souls —making us better or bitter.

Every trouble is a flood, and we can either rise up or sink down. And getting our days all into the ark of Christ always lets us still rise.

Grace —it, too, has floods of its own. . . .

The way heaven comes down so we can rise.

Do one thing today just to please God.

Strange, this familiar Father of prodigals

whose love, too much for one lifetime,

wills that we shall share the

feast of forgiveness and joy

in the epilogue of eternity.

Strange, this daily advent of

EMMANUEL

J. F. WILSON

When have you felt flooded, overwhelmed by the waters rising around you?

In what ways has God been an ark in the midst of your own floods?

How does it feel to picture the tears of God, to know that He suffers alongside you?

I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing to others.

GENESIS 12:2

The LORD had said to Abram, “Leave your native country, your relatives, and your father’s family, and go to the land that I will show you. I will make you into a great nation. I will bless you . . . and you will be a blessing to others. I will bless those who bless you and curse those who treat you with contempt. All the families on earth will be blessed through you.”

So Abram departed as the LORD had instructed, and Lot went with him. Abram was seventy-five years old when he left Haran. He took his wife, Sarai, his nephew Lot, and all his wealth —his livestock and all the people he had taken into his household at Haran —and headed for the land of Canaan. When they arrived in Canaan, Abram traveled through the land as far as Shechem. There he set up camp beside the oak of Moreh. At that time, the area was inhabited by Canaanites.

Then the LORD appeared to Abram and said, “I will give this land to your descendants.” And Abram built an altar there and dedicated it to the LORD, who had appeared to him.

GENESIS 12:1-7

This is the gift that wraps up all stresses quiet:

I will bless you.

“I will bless you,” says the God who comes to where you are.

Who comes in the heaviness of the day, to the space where the weight hangs on the edges of you, so you just keep holding your breath, so you just keep forgetting to breathe.

But the weight of everything melts like thinning snow in the heat of His words: “I will bless you.” He will not burden you. He will not break you. He will bless you —the God of invincible reliability, the God who has infinite resources, the God who is insistent love. You can always go ahead and breathe —He will bless. You can always breathe when you know all is grace.

That is the order of grace. . . .

The personal blessings envelop you first. Then you are the blessing sent to the world.

You will be experienced as a blessing —to the extent you have first experienced yourself as blessed. You must feel the fullness of your own pitcher before you trust the pouring out of yourself.

“It is no use for you to attempt to sow out of an empty basket, for that would be sowing nothing but wind,” wrote Spurgeon.
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