Thank God for his Son—a gift too wonderful for words! -2 Corinthians 9:15 (NLT)
For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord. -Romans 6:23 (NASB)

What’s your dream gift?

Even when I walked apart from God for forty years, I knew there was no gift I could buy that would ever give me lasting joy. But finally, in the summer of my 40th year, my eyes were opened to the best gift ever…the gift I’ve heard of in song all my life, but never understood till then.

Rewind over 2000 years: an unmarried, Jewish teenage girl under Roman rule was told she would become pregnant and give birth to the long-prophesied savior her people had been crying out for over a thousand years.

Fast forward to Jesus’ birth: He was a newborn swaddled in cloth strips, lying in an animal feeding trough…in a smelly stable. This was the birth of hope for a world surrendered to darkness…and the birth of the One who would light up the dark world and make spotless any who would believe in and follow Him.

He was the best gift ever, a gift to the world!

Can you imagine what it must’ve been like for Mary to hold God Himself in her arms?!? What joy and awe her mind must have been swirling in!

“I’m holding…”

God’s Son! The great I AM! The same One who measured and created the universe and everything in it! The One prophesied to deliver us!

The modern classic “Mary Did You Know?” said it best: “When you kiss your little baby / You kiss the face of God!”

No greater gift is there than the Son of God, the fulfillment of the Scriptural promise of redemption and salvation for true believers, the blazing light of hope in our dark world. It’s the gift that blazes in my heart, saving me in this world and bridging me to the next…and I finally have an inextinguishable joy money can’t buy.

In excelsis Deo (Glory to God in the highest)!

This season’s soundtrack

Though there are many versions of this song, please give a listen to this version of Mark Lowry’s “Mary Did You Know?”, by the acappella group Pentatonix. It’s a beautiful reminder of the amazing gift God gave to the world.

Merry Christmas!