Three Things

Three Christmas gifts you desperately need but can’t afford
Every Christmas PNC Bank jokingly calculates “the true cost” of Christmas. For the last 36 years it has released a so-called Christmas Price Index by estimating what each item in the Christmas carol “The Twelve Days of Christmas” will cost in the current year.

In this unique and whimsical holiday tradition, the bank says, people are learning about the economy in a fun way.

Guess how much the true love has to pay to buy all the gifts mentioned in the song again and again?

A staggering $170,000.

The most expensive items on the list?

The ten lords a-leaping.

To calculate this cost, the bank uses the prices ballet companies cite for their male dancers.

What if we ponder the gifts of Christmas no money can buy? And since the magi presented three gifts to Christ when He was born, let’s see if we can come up with the three most precious gifts God gives us every Christmas.

1. Enjoy him forever
Adam and Eve had wonderful fellowship with God. The Lord God even walked in Eden in the cool of the day, so we read in Genesis 3:8. They had free access to Him, they could talk to Him and ask Him as many questions as they wanted.

They were fulfilling their ultimate purpose: to glorify God and enjoy him forever.

Thoughtlessly they shattered that beautiful open friendship with the almighty Creator of heaven and earth when they disobeyed him.

Tarnished by sin, humans could no longer go freely to this holy God. God gravely warns Moses: “You cannot see my face, for man shall not see me and live.” (Exodus 33:20)

But then, on Christmas, Immanuel came to us. He humiliated himself by becoming one of us. By being perfect and just and willing to die in our place, He let the curtain separating us from God’s holiness rip from top to bottom.

For me, one of the most precious gifts of Christmas is that we can once more fulfill that original purpose God had in mind for us, glorify him and enjoy him forever. How precious that through Christ we can freely enter into his presence again.

2. Fill our lives with meaning
The night when Jesus was born a long-envisioned plan came to fruition. God spoke of this to Adam and Eve, later to Abraham and David, among others. His prophet Isaiah gives us glimpse upon glimpse of what will happen with his Servant.

And then, “… when the fullness of time had come, God sent forth his Son, born of woman, born under the law, to redeem those who were under the law, so that we might receive adoption as sons.” (Galatians 4:4)

Over millennia and in his infinite wisdom and power God synchronized every detail of his comprehensive salvation program.

When Christ came to earth to start his redeeming work God superbly brought together all the details. For instance, a Roman Caesar insisting on a census at the exact right time, so that Jesus would be born in Bethlehem, as it was foretold.

Here are more specifics showing exactly what is meant by the phrase “the fullness of time”. The whole world spoke Greek at the time which meant the gospel could spread with ease even across borders. And all those Roman bridges with their magnificent arches? They ensured the apostles had good roads for travel so that they could share the Good News wider and wider.

With the beautifully coordinated picture in mind it becomes so much easier to believe Jesus when he assures us that God even knows how many hairs we have on our head. Yes, he knows when every single sparrow falls. (Matthew 10: 29).

Finding meaning in life is a strong drive for humans. Even when we watch clouds, we tend to find pictures in them. Do you know what a cloud is? Dust particles surrounded by water drops. Inherently clouds have no pattern, but because God created us in his image, we want to fill even formless objects with meaning.

Another gift of Christmas then is the sweet knowledge we live according to a plan. There is no such thing as coincidence. Everything in our lives has meaning.

3. Live in his light
Seeing is believing. That was more or less the motto of Thomas, Jesus’ disciple. He said, “Unless I see in his hands the mark of the nails, and place my finger into the mark of the nails, and place my hand into his side, I will never believe.”

What if it’s not so much that seeing is believing than believing is seeing.

For instance, Simeon when the Holy Spirit brought him to the temple just in time to meet the baby Jesus, said, “For my eyes have seen Your salvation (Luke 2:30)”. All he saw was a helpless baby, but because he believed, he could “see” God’s whole redemption plan fulfilled in that infant.

This happened with John, another of Jesus’ disciples, too. After Jesus’ resurrection he entered the empty tomb, saw the discarded clothes folded there and because he already believed he could immediately “see” Christ had risen, just as he said he would.

Christ and his coming at Christmas are gifts from God. So is faith. It’s a wondrous gift though, because faith enlightens your mind and allows you to see the whole spiritual realm of God. It lifts your life from the mundane to the glorious.

As it’s stated in Psalm 36:9, “in your light do we see light.”

With all the Christmas lights adorning the streets, remind yourself often that the true Light of the World has come. He fills your mind with his light and makes it possible for you to see how his Kingdom is coming.

May your Christmas overflow with blessings from these three gifts. They cost our “True Love” everything. And that’s precisely why they are so priceless.

Risa Haasbroek is a certified Christian life coach. She has a gift for you to help you learn to love yourself the way God loves you. It’s a free journal with 30 prompts for 30 days to help remind you how far you’ve come and of the gifts and talents God gave you.

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