When poets have run out of words, and composers call no melodies to mind; when preachers have re-told the old, familiar story; when massive choirs have sung the final hallelujah—there still will be a mystery at the center of it all.
Grace moved a God of love to do what is unthinkable to us—to surrender all His privileges and power; constrict his vast galactic reach—to enter our tight time and space, and share our mud and feel our pain. Describe it, sing it, preach it if you can, but nothing but the love of God explains the grace of God. “Great indeed, we confess, is the mystery of our religion” (1 Tim 3:16).
The gifts we share on Christmas Day are, at their best, dull mirrors of a gift only our God could give. Only He who fills eternity could give a life that lasts forever. “For God so loved the world that He gave His only Son, so that everyone who believes in Him may not perish but may have eternal life” (John 3:16).
Hidden in the boxes and the bows are gadgets that will make us smile, or foods that tempt our palate, or promises of trips we long to take. But let us pause the music and the laughter long enough to wonder at the gift for which there is no counterpart: “God was in Christ reconciling the world to Himself, not imputing their trespasses to them, and has committed to us the word of reconciliation” (2 Cor 5:19). “Let us go now to Bethlehem and see this thing that has taken place, which the Lord has made known to us” (Luke 2:15).
Grace is the gift that changes both our now and our forever.
So stay in grace.