Thought of the Day !!

And now these three remain, faith, hope and love.  But the greatest of these is love.

                                                     1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV)

Technically we are in the Advent season where we look forward to the celebration of the birth of Christ and His Second Coming.  But unofficially, I believe the Christmas season begins the day after Christmas (even if the stores try to advertise it as early as Halloween).  So with this in mind, I wonder how many of us have bought our Christmas presents yet.  I know that I've shared three things with my mother that I'm hoping Santa will bring me (even if it does say from mom and dad on the package, haha).

But how many of us have thought about what we will give Jesus this year for Christmas?

In yesterday's sermon I took the Wise Men (who actually came after Christmas) and showed that they brought four gifts to Jesus.  We all know of the three gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh.  But the first thing that they did when they arrived at the house was bow down and worship Jesus.  Take every opportunity to worship him this Christmas season.  Then they gave their three traditional gifts that were perfect for a king.

It got me wondering about what the perfect gifts for our King this Christmas would be.  Then it hit me.  The same three things that God has given us that are so important to our own lives can be given back to Jesus this year.  First there is faith.  This is the most basic of all gifts for Jesus.  Without it there is no reason to give.  Having faith not only for salvation, but also that Jesus is there for us and that He listens and cares and will help in times of trouble will put a smile on His face this Christmas.  Our faith in Him means that He will be the one that we will lean on.

The second is much like the first.  Let us place our hope in Him instead of ourselves.  He will be the one who will get us through this life and into the next one, not ourselves.  He is the one that wants us to hope for great things through Him.  Doing this will also bring a smile to our Savior's face.

The last, and most important gift is love.  How do we give the gift of love to Jesus?  We do that by sharing it with others the Christmas season.  If we share it like Jesus has always done then it will be sacrificial.  This means it will put others first.  It means we will care about those who care about us as well as those who don't.  It means we will share with family as well as strangers.  It means we will share with those who have, but most importantly, those who do not.

Giving these three gifts back to Jesus this Christmas will surely make Him happy and bring about a Merry Christmas.

In the love of Christ,
greg