Children love gifts!

Welcome to my Advent Blog! This is the 3rd of 13 blogs, and I encourage you to read them in order. We are exploring ways to rediscover the child-like faith we once had.

The baby Jesus was given gifts at his birth. Jesus was himself the great gift from God to his prized creation, us. Children love getting gifts. While adults like getting them too, it gets more complicated to receive as adults. We have a hard time receiving if we are not also giving something in return, kids don’t have that problem. Adults have a hard time not earning our gifts, kids don’t have that problem. The gospel is about getting something we don’t have to earn.  And while God hopes that we will give back after receiving, it is not the reason He gives the gift. God gives because that is who He is.  

Children will take any gift you have from them, at any moment, for any reason.  Jesus came to give the gift of peace, love and hope that is only found through Him. Isn’t it time to take the gift and enjoy it? To enjoy something, you have to use it and to use it, we must spend time with it. 

Too many people don’t enjoy the biggest Christmas given to them. In fact, Christmas is about the gift of Christ that we don’t earn or deserve. The great thing about getting Jesus for Christmas is that it never stops or fails to teach us something new about peace, love and hope. There are always new ways to explore and learn about the gift.  

We need to stop seeing God as a tyrant making us feel guilty about our lack of faith. We need to start seeing God as one who gives the ultimate gift and can’t wait to see us unwrap and enjoy the gift of Jesus. 
Be looing for the next blog post Friday, Dec 6. Please feel free to comment below.

Pastor Dan