The birth of forgiveness, love and grace…

Unto us a child was born…  a child who breathed the universe into existence, who breathed life into everything that lives… who saved me from myself…

Incomparable, inconceivable love….Christmas means nothing less….  That the One who shed Heaven’s glory to become one of us made such a choice… So I could find a way back to God… a way back to grace…salvation…

And that he knew what would happen…what must happen to bridge the gulf we created between ourselves and God… that he knew he would be reviled by some unto his very death… no less a death then that which many suffered in those days… that he would endure pain beyond any I can ever begin to imagine…

On that day thousands of years ago forgiveness, purest love and unimaginable grace was born in the form of a human child…

A human child containing the Eternal God… The alpha and omega… the reason for all things…

And because of the birth of forgiveness, purest love and unimaginable grace we must adopt and hold those qualities close to our hearts….

In imitation of our God who became man…  in obedience to one of the two greatest commandments that we love our neighbor as ourselves…

For Christmas is a time to give the purest love…

a time to offer the purity of forgiveness…

a time to give the gift of grace…

a time to love our neighbor as we love ourselves…

to visit the old, the sick, the poor…

for the gifts under the tree are really there to remind us of the greatest undeserved gift… salvation… communion with God…

the greatest gift we can give is the one He gave… ourselves… as he gave himself…

We can give our hands to lift up those without strength… to repair homes that need repair… to feed mouths in place of hands grown to weak to lift a spoon… reaching down to a young person who has been felled by life… to those who have been caught in the traps set by the enemy… just as we have been caught… and rescued…

We can give our hearts to offer love to those who receive no love… to those who are imprisoned… to those who are living without a roof… to offer love to those who seem unlovable…

We can give our minds to find solutions to hunger… to resolve the problems that keep people apart… to discover ways to help build homes… provide ways for children to have an education… discover the things that God has placed for us to discover that will solve the problems we have created or inherited in this world…

Let us remind our children as they open their wonderful gifts that those very gifts symbolize the gifts given to us by Jesus Christ…  that the tree has come to symbolize eternal life… and that Christmas is really about the giving… not the receiving…

Christmas is the celebration of our forgiveness… the love that gave birth to the forgiveness… and the grace that allowed our nature to be forgotten when we choose to turn and follow Him… Jesus Christ… He who sheds forth Universes… who lit the stars… who formed us in our mothers wombs… and

who chose to become one of us so we could once again…

Know Him…

Christmas… the birth of forgiveness, love and grace…