Christmas has always been one of my favorite times of the year. I enjoy every single part of it! My family decorates the house, puts up Christmas lights, cooks, cleans, etc. Even now that I am out “adulting”, I still find myself waiting in anticipation to come back to my parents’ house with a home that is decorated and filled with Christmas spirit. Christmas has and most likely will always be the time of the year that I am in awe of. There is something else in this life that I have never been able to truly describe. It may sound simple, but the grace of God and his love has always placed me in a loss for words.
I tend to be extremely hard on myself in all aspects of my life. When it comes to work, I want to try to do the best job possible, and when I find myself failing, I blame myself first. In my relationships with my friends and family, I reflect on how I can always be doing a better job. I look at how I need to be doing better always first, that is no different about my relationship with Jesus either.
However, God gives us a gift that is indescribable, even when we don’t deserve it. When we look back to the Old Testament, God chose a people first and he promised to always be there for them no matter what. In Genesis 17:7, God makes a covenant with Abraham, “And I will establish my covenant between me and you and your offspring after you throughout their generations for an everlasting covenant, to be God to you and to your offspring after you”. Abraham was a man that did fear the Lord but was in no way perfect to the standards that were set before him. Immediately after the initial covenant made with Abram, Abram claimed that his wife Sarai was his sister to protect his life while traveling to Egypt (Genesis 12:10-20). God promised Abram that he would be protected, but still Abraham gave into his human desire to follow his own plan. Also, while Israel was enslaved in Egypt, their great leader, Moses, that God called to lead His people out of slavery, still out of anger disobeyed God and broke the stone tablets that God gave him (Exodus 32:15-20). King David, described as a man after God’s own heart, committed the sin of adultery and murder(2 Samuel 11). These three men are just examples of the countless others that the Lord used who gave up, disobeyed, and sinned against the Lord. Even though time after time, the Israelites continued to sin against the Lord, God had a plan to always hold fast to His covenant that He made since the first day of creation.
The only way that God could break this cycle of sin was to provide a redeemer. In Jeremiah 33:14-26, God tells Jeremiah of a “branch to spring up for David, and he shall execute justice and righteousness in the land. In those days Judah will be saved, and Jerusalem will dwell securely”. Jeremiah is foretelling of a redeemer, a Savior that will bring about a gift that will change everything. The savior that came, Jesus, came humbly to this world to save all of us from our sin and to fulfill all righteousness. Jesus came as an innocent child, from the line of David, and lived as perfectly man/God. He then died a gruesome death on a cross to save us all from physical and eternal death.
In the verse that was presented today, 2 Corinthians 9:15, says “Thanks be to God for inexpressible gift”. Another way I see that is indescribable, unattainable, and unimaginable gift. Jesus died gruesomely on a cross for a people who didn’t deserve it, so that way He could be with us forever. That is exactly what makes His sacrifice an inexpressible gift. There is no exact human way to express how wonderful the saving grace of God is. No matter how much we fail, sin, or give up, Jesus still forgives us of all that. He calls us “a new creation” (2 Corinthians 5:17).
I talked about how Christmas was my favorite time of year. It gave me feelings of awe. However, the grace of God and his love are truly inexpressible, nothing like the feelings of awe I get from Christmas.