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Gift Exchange

“For you know the grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, that though He was rich, yet for your sake He became poor, so that you through His poverty might become rich.” II Cor. 8:9 NAS

There is something universally compelling about the Christmas story. Against all odds a Child is born to a virgin. He is born in obscurity, impoverished, without so much as a bed of His own. Yet, even in His birth, Heaven could not keep the secret. The sky was filled with the light of a very special star, a beacon of hope for all mankind; a beacon of light in a dark world; a beacon of love for the ages. The air was filled with angelic chorus’s praising the name of this Most High God.

The King of Glory, born in a manger, come to save His people from their sins. Come to bring peace on earth, good will towards men. It was the ultimate Gift exchange. God, who IS Love, gave us His only Son, that through His life and through His death, mankind could find hope, peace and ultimate redemption. Why did our Savior have to die? Because, greater love has no man than this: that He would lay His life down for His friends. Never in the history of the world had there been a God who had been born poor and lowly, risen to spiritual greatness and authority, and then, gently laid His life down for the sins of all mankind.

This was the ultimate Gift Exchange. Our lives for His. Our blessing for His poverty. Our wholeness from His brokenness. Our joy from His sorrow. Our belonging from His rejection. The ULTIMATE Gift exchange. Like no other, ever.

This Christmastide, as we look back through the years and remember the loves and faces we have enjoyed in our homes, whether groups of young folks on the blustery coast of the North Sea in Scotland, to our homes in Thailand, and the various missionaries and students and friends who have shared our table…and shared our love, to these most recent years and being blessed to celebrate once again with our own precious parents and siblings, nieces and nephews. All faces become clear and familiar in the lights of Christmas. The songs and the giving spirit are still the same.

The LOVE that came down that Christmas morning long ago, is the love that has brought all of those faces…and memories into our lives.

~ Debbie Ecker