The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas by Ann Voskamp
Book: The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas by Ann Voskamp
Read Free Book Online
Authors: Ann Voskamp
Ads: Link
us?
Everyone, everywhere looks forward to Christmas. And it’s the joy of Christmas that offers the gift of exclusiveness —because of its effectiveness to save the terminal soul.
He. Will. Save.
God. With. Us.
God can’t stay away. This is the love story that has been coming for you since the beginning. The God who walked with us in the Garden in the cool of the evening before the Fall shattered our closeness with Him is the God who came after His people in the pillar of cloud, of fire, because He couldn’t bear to let His people wander alone. He is the God who came to grieving Job as a whirlwind, a tornado, a hurricane, who covenanted to Abraham as a smoking furnace, who wildly pitched His tent with the Holy of Holies so somehow, in all His holy Shekinah glory, He could get close enough again to live amid His people. He is the God who is so for us that He can’t stay away from us. The God who loves us and likes us and isn’t merely 50 percent or 72.3 percentfor us, but the God who is always, unequivocally, 100 percent for us —the God who so likes us, the God who is so for us that He is the God who chooses to be with us.
He disarms Himself of heaven so that you can take Him in arms on earth.
He comes as a Baby because He’s done with the barriers.
He comes vulnerable because He knows the only way to intimacy with you is through vulnerability with you. You can’t get to intimacy except through the door of vulnerability. So God throws open the door of this world —and enters as a baby. As the most vulnerable imaginable. Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with you.
What religion ever had a god that wanted such intimacy with us that He came with such vulnerability to us?
What God ever came so tender we could touch Him? So fragile that we could break Him? So vulnerable that His bare, beating heart could be hurt? Only the One who loves you to death.
Only the God who had to come back to get you. Only the God who would risk vulnerability, pay the price for your iniquity, because He wanted nothing less than intimacy.
It cost Him everything to be with you. Who will spend a fraction of time just to be with Him? Who wants the gift of His presence?
Christmas is about God’s doing whatever it takes to be with us —and our doing whatever it takes to be with Him. He climbed down from the throne in heaven to get to you. Climb over the throes of Christmas to get to Him.
There are candles to be lit. There is space to be made. The stars are moving nearer now.
John Wesley died with the words “The best of all is, God is with us” on his tongue. [29]
They could beat in our hearts.
They could be the ever beat of our drum, like the ringing of a hammer, like the thrum of love coming close.
Find two twigs today and construct a cross out of the bits of wood tied together with a piece of red string. Set your cross in a windowsill for you and all the world to see. Give thanks to God with us, who rebuilds us.
He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great “I am that I am” shrinks into our flesh? . . . What self-denial, what self-abasement, what self-emptying is here!
HENRY LAW
How does your perspective change on the hurry and the worry when you remember that God is with you?
What does it mean to you that God came in the form of an infant, with human skin?
What around you is broken and in need of saving? Ask God to restore and redeem any broken relationships and the broken places in your heart.
She . . . laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
LUKE 2:7
At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s
Everyone, everywhere looks forward to Christmas. And it’s the joy of Christmas that offers the gift of exclusiveness —because of its effectiveness to save the terminal soul.
He. Will. Save.
God. With. Us.
God can’t stay away. This is the love story that has been coming for you since the beginning. The God who walked with us in the Garden in the cool of the evening before the Fall shattered our closeness with Him is the God who came after His people in the pillar of cloud, of fire, because He couldn’t bear to let His people wander alone. He is the God who came to grieving Job as a whirlwind, a tornado, a hurricane, who covenanted to Abraham as a smoking furnace, who wildly pitched His tent with the Holy of Holies so somehow, in all His holy Shekinah glory, He could get close enough again to live amid His people. He is the God who is so for us that He can’t stay away from us. The God who loves us and likes us and isn’t merely 50 percent or 72.3 percentfor us, but the God who is always, unequivocally, 100 percent for us —the God who so likes us, the God who is so for us that He is the God who chooses to be with us.
He disarms Himself of heaven so that you can take Him in arms on earth.
He comes as a Baby because He’s done with the barriers.
He comes vulnerable because He knows the only way to intimacy with you is through vulnerability with you. You can’t get to intimacy except through the door of vulnerability. So God throws open the door of this world —and enters as a baby. As the most vulnerable imaginable. Because He wants unimaginable intimacy with you.
What religion ever had a god that wanted such intimacy with us that He came with such vulnerability to us?
What God ever came so tender we could touch Him? So fragile that we could break Him? So vulnerable that His bare, beating heart could be hurt? Only the One who loves you to death.
Only the God who had to come back to get you. Only the God who would risk vulnerability, pay the price for your iniquity, because He wanted nothing less than intimacy.
It cost Him everything to be with you. Who will spend a fraction of time just to be with Him? Who wants the gift of His presence?
Christmas is about God’s doing whatever it takes to be with us —and our doing whatever it takes to be with Him. He climbed down from the throne in heaven to get to you. Climb over the throes of Christmas to get to Him.
There are candles to be lit. There is space to be made. The stars are moving nearer now.
John Wesley died with the words “The best of all is, God is with us” on his tongue. [29]
They could beat in our hearts.
They could be the ever beat of our drum, like the ringing of a hammer, like the thrum of love coming close.
Find two twigs today and construct a cross out of the bits of wood tied together with a piece of red string. Set your cross in a windowsill for you and all the world to see. Give thanks to God with us, who rebuilds us.
He, whom no infinitudes can hold, is contained within infant’s age, and infant’s form. Can it be, that the great “I am that I am” shrinks into our flesh? . . . What self-denial, what self-abasement, what self-emptying is here!
HENRY LAW
How does your perspective change on the hurry and the worry when you remember that God is with you?
What does it mean to you that God came in the form of an infant, with human skin?
What around you is broken and in need of saving? Ask God to restore and redeem any broken relationships and the broken places in your heart.
She . . . laid him in a manger, because there was no lodging available for them.
LUKE 2:7
At that time the Roman emperor, Augustus, decreed that a census should be taken throughout the Roman Empire. (This was the first census taken when Quirinius was governor of Syria.) All returned to their own ancestral towns to register for this census. And because Joseph was a descendant of King David, he had to go to Bethlehem in Judea, David’s
Similar Books
