The gift that didn't need to be given

How much thought do you put into a gift at Christmas? Do you grab your cash and pick up the first thing you see? Do you plan ahead and look for the best deals? Are you watching and listening all year, jotting down your ideas?

It's the thought that counts they say.

So, how much thought did God put in to the sending and giving of Jesus Christ?  

Jesus was a gift that was planned from eternity.

Jesus was a gift that revealed God was indeed watching and listening.

Jesus was a gift that would cost God everything

Jesus was a gift that didn't need to be given.

God in Himself was sufficient, complete, satisfied. Happy, happy, happy was the Father and the Son and The Spirit! Being full of love and adoration for each other, there was no internal need or loneliness, no external force or obligation that would drive God to seek anything outside of Himself. 

And yet, He created. He created a world. He created man and woman. God who is love, out of the unconstrained freeness and unrestrained kindness of His heart, gave with unspeakable joy.  He shared from the abundance of His fullness with man, so that man might enjoy and rejoice and be satisfied in the life of God. 

We who live one breath at a time can know and love the One who gives us each breath.

But for all the beauty and magnificence of this world, for all its reflections and refractions of God's glory, not a single beam of light or blade of grass or drop of ocean or shade of color or note of music, can compare to the Son of God taking on flesh. In Jesus was the perfect image, radiance and fullness of God's glory. 

And He would be born. And He would grow to be a man. And He would die. 

All that was within the immeasurable power of the eternal, creator God of love to do; His infinite thoughts and feelings and desires; it all culminated, climaxed, and crescendoed in torn flesh, flowing blood, and tortured breathing. In Jesus God gave Himself, not because He needed something, but because, needing nothing, He wanted to. 

It needn't have cost God anything to save us; He is God and has everything He "needs". But it did cost Him everything to save us. It cost Him His son, Jesus. Why? Because He loved us while we were yet sinners. Jesus died for us on a cross. Why? So that we might love God even as He loves us. To accomplish our salvation, Jesus needed to die. But God didn't need to accomplish our salvation. He chose to, because being love, He loved.

The gift of Jesus is an invitation to enter into the life of God, to find a place with God that we don't deserve – a place we never would have heard of if it wasn't for God making it known first. He has revealed His love in Jesus, poured out His love through Jesus, and invites us into His love because of Jesus.

Go back to the gift of Jesus. It was free. It wasn't thoughtless, rash or cheap. It was love. Go and love and give, not because you have to, but because you want to.