The GIFT Giver
This Season, Experience the ULTIMATE Giver of Gifts
Ephesians 2:8, ‘For by grace you have been saved! Nothing you did could ever earn this salvation, for it was the love gift from God that brought us to Christ!’ (TPT)
December 26th, 2022
the GIFT: the Greatest Love Ever Given
He might just stay here in this place now forever. He tasted the salt of tears on His tongue and felt their overflow drip onto calloused hands, hands weathered and worked by time and creation. The roadmap those memories leaking from His eyes had traveled crossed boundaries and broke down walls and forged severed bonds. He thought His heart might break.
The Giver clenched His eyes shut as the procession prodded His Son up Golgotha. He knew it as the place of the Skull, so dastardly was the spot on the God-forsaken earth below. His mouth tasted of dust and dirt clotted His vision; the wind always blew there, chaos in motion. He wished He could reach out and touch His Son, quiet all the clamor and the wild beat of His heart. Just for a moment.
The Giver shuddered under the weight of what He’d witnessed. Even though He full-well knew what had stared the Son of Man in the face—after all, He had scripted it before the foundation of world that the Lamb of God would be slain—it still had taken His breath away. Like any father, who wants to witness your son being beaten and taunted, jested and jabbed, annihilated and tortured? And the worst was yet to come. Again the Giver shivered, wanting so badly to rewrite the script, so Jesus would not have to endure what lie ahead.
Heavily, He fell to His knees, His head in His hands. The ultimate gift ever given would cost the most—it would cost everything. The cries of His one and only unique Son reached heaven. The thud of iron on iron as the Roman soldiers drove the spikes through the palm of His boy’s hands made the Giver dizzy with anguish. Emotion ran like fire through His veins, burning as it traveled the length of His spine. The wretchedness of the mankind He had breathed into being now brought Him here to this place; the arrival of the travesty which would cost His Son His life more painstaking than He’d imagined it could be. He wished He could quit; right now, before they stood the tree He’d once grown in the garden on which now His boy hung. He shook His head in sorrow, He cannot not keep His Word. He is God, the Giver of His Word, and it can never come back empty or unfulfilled. He couldn’t, but He certainly wanted to shout, “STOP! No more!” before they dropped the cross in the hole in the ground they had augured out. Before…
The Giver felt woozy, sick to His stomach. Everything around Him began to shimmy. It was growing dimmer by the second, and He knew shortly, it would be pitch black. Beads of perspiration formed on His lip, and the evil was so thick, He could cut through it with a blade. He quivered, turning away. He was being forced to turn His back on His Son when His Son likely needed Him the most. The very reason the Son had left Glory, pulled on skin, and entered humanity, was now precisely why the Giver could no longer look upon Him. Just like man cannot glare at the sun without damage, the Giver cannot gaze upon sin, nor its stain. Ironic, He mused; He now faced the world and all its blemish while setting His back to His Son, remembering every detailed moment of what led everyone here, to this place.
Forever took too long; sin stood between the Giver and His true son. The Giver wept, crouched in a ball, uncanny—He, the God of the Universe, and He would not stop the scene playing out beneath Him. But He could not; His love for mankind was too strong, too deep, too eternal, to sacrifice the permanent on the altar of the immediate. The agony He felt for His Son so palpable and raw He felt the nails, the spikes, the thorns, and tasted the bitter, burning ember of vinegar on His lips.
When at long last, His precious Son whispered, “It is finished!” the Giver lifted His hidden brow in relief and turned in the direction of Jesus. So much love poured from His outstretched arms, so much love emanated from the Giver’s heart. Now, the real story could begin.
Psalm 18:19, ‘He stood me up in a wide-open field. I stood there saved; surprised to be loved.’ (MSG)
