Ribbon. Fancy wrapping paper. Big boxes filled with anticipation.
Getting a gift is wonderful. Sometimes giving it is even better.
Just outside Fort Worth, Texas, a mother of five loved to wrap her gifts in unusual ways using brown paper sacks. Yes, brown paper sacks, the sort that used to come from grocery stores. She tried newspapers once or twice, using the color comics from the Sunday section. Then she found towels made great wrapping paper and could be part of the gift.
For this mother of five, the gift inside was special, but so was the wrapping paper she put around it. People who knew her began to look forward to her unusual gifts. “Ah, there’s the one from Sue,” and they would point it out, pleased to see it.
One Christmas morning two thousand years ago God wrapped his special gift to humanity in the most unusual package he could find. He knew the gift was the special thing, but the wrapping is what we’d remember. God wrapped salvation in the person of Jesus, and we unwrapped him on the cross.
John 19:30 tells us:
“When Jesus had received the sour wine, he said, ‘It is finished,’ and he bowed his head and gave up his spirit.”
Even people who didn’t know Christ, people who’d not received his gift, still noticed the remarkable packaging of his life. They recognized the difference in how he lived. And just like Christmas gifts today, once the packaging was tossed aside, the real gift was ready to be used.
Jesus lives on past the discarded packaging of humanity he cast aside two thousand years ago.
Revelation 1:18 tells us:
“I died, and behold I am alive forevermore, and I have the keys of Death and Hades.”
Fancy wrapping paper. That was Jesus’ life on earth. His life and death became a gift that lives on in our hearts and lives; in the things we think and do; and in the way we interact with the people we share our lives with.
Our gift was and still is salvation through Jesus’ death on the cross. Let’s share it with those who haven’t yet realized it is for them, also.
Let’s open Jesus. He’s the best gift that’s ever been given.
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