The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas (5 page)

So slow down to feel the wind. Listen to the carols just a little bit longer. Linger in the quiet and taste the grace of now, and know that He is good and He is God. Name them in this moment —gift upon gift upon gift —and listen for the echo in everything:
I will bless you.

D. L. Moody once wrote, “Faith is the gift of God. So is the air, but you have to breathe it; so is bread, but you have to eat it; so is water, but you have to drink it.”
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Breathe it, eat it, drink it —leave the blur of Ur and slow to taste and see the promised land of Advent, of Christmas, of His Coming —the blessing of gift upon gift. Only when you first unwrap the gifts of blessings to you can you be wrapped up as a gift of blessing to others. Only when you are overwhelmed with the goodness of God can you overflow with the goodness of God to others.

And that is the blessing God graced Abram with, the blessing He graces you with this Advent, the gift that makes you a gift. The greatest gift God graces a soul with is His own presence.

So the whirl can hush and the spin can slow because He will bless, and He will bless with Himself come down. The present is His presence, and the greatest present you always have to give is His presence —looking into
someone’s eyes as you listen, refusing the wrong of rushing, lingering long enough to really listen —to everything.

There is no need for more: the heart is full of gifts that is full of Christ.

It’s strange how that happens —that any place becomes the Promised Land when the blessing of His presence becomes the gift we receive —and give.

Advent happening anywhere.

Go to a new place today —to a neighbor’s home you’ve never been before. Be a blessing and bring your neighbor a blessing of some sort. Leave him or her a Christmas card telling about Jesus, the blessing God gives to all people on earth!

The birth of the child into the darkness of the world made possible not just a new way of understanding life but a new way of living it.

FREDERICK BUECHNER

How has God blessed you, as He blessed Abram?

In what ways have other people overflowed God’s grace into your life?

What are some ways you can be a blessing to others?

God has brought me laughter.

GENESIS 21:6

The LORD kept his word and did for Sarah exactly what he had promised. She became pregnant, and she gave birth to a son for Abraham in his old age. This happened at just the time God had said it would. And Abraham named their son Isaac. Eight days after Isaac was born, Abraham circumcised him as God had commanded. Abraham was 100 years old when Isaac was born.

And Sarah declared, “God has brought me laughter. All who hear about this will laugh with me. Who would have said to Abraham that Sarah would nurse a baby? Yet I have given Abraham a son in his old age!”

GENESIS 21:1-7

It happens just at the time God knew it would and should. You hear it in the middle of Advent, a whole string of notes that just come along and untie you: “Fa-la-la-la-la, la, la, la, la.”

Notes like an echo of laughter.

Like children throwing back their heads and letting laughter, this oxygenated grace, cascade and cascade.

Like an old woman who cradles the unexpected, who cradles grace, who looks into the impossible made possible and laughs with the miraculous because that is what the relieved and re-livers do: “God has brought me laughter.” You can almost see it —her wrinkles and weariness waning away, her lips cradling this smile.

God brings the weary woman laughter. Laughter is His gift —oxygenated grace.

“Joy, which was the small publicity of the pagan, is the gigantic secret of the Christian,” writes G. K. Chesterton.
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The gigantic secret gift that He gives and we unwrap, that we never stop unwrapping —we who were barren now graced with the Child who lets us laugh with relief for all eternity. There is nothing left to want. There is nothing left to fear: “All fear is but the notion that God’s love ends.”
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And His for you never will. So loosen up, because the chains have been loosed, and laugh
the laughter of the freed. Laughter —it’s all oxygenated grace.

In the press of a dark world, laughter comes to the Sarahs and the sufferers and the stressed as the reliever and then the reminder —that ache is not the last word for those who believe God. Jesus is. Jesus is the last word, and we rejoice and rejoice again and re-joy again because grace is our oxygen now.

“Angels can fly because they take themselves lightly,” writes G. K. Chesterton.
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And somewhere a weary soul lets go of weight. And laughs thanks for the grace and takes more lightly —and it’s like the sound of wings.

Like somewhere between heaven and earth, there is mirth —the echo of angels.

Try keeping a smile on your face all day. Look for three opportunities today to make three different people laugh with you. We are the joy-filled people! We’ve been given the Son!

You have as much laughter as you have faith.

MARTIN LUTHER

When is the last time you laughed . . . really laughed?

What impossible thing are you longing for?

Like the angels, what can you take more lightly this Christmas?