The Gift of God Made Manifest in Us!

Receiving the Gift

The Christian faith is always being given to us by God as a gift.  God will never take it back nor will God withhold it from any person on this planet. We, however, do not like to be placed in the position of being the recipient of a gift. Especially when that gift is deemed necessary for our survival. It is foreign to human nature for us to be told that we need anything!  No, we want to be the ones who have something to give.  We want to occupy the places of power and self-determination.

But the stance of the Christian life is a humble one.  It is a life that finds us constantly on our knees in gratitude with our hands open and outstretched to receive the gift that God has poured out to us from the cross; namely God’s Son Jesus Christ and through him everlasting life.

It’s a Daily Gift

When God places that treasure in our hands and hearts we are called receive it every day as a fragile gift but one that was purchased at great cost.  Every day.  We were not born Christian.  Not only that but we also don’t wake up each day as a Christian either.  The Holy Spirit gives us the gift of faith over and over again and each day we receive it and that faith becomes manifest in us and through us to our neighbors, our families, our communities through the acts of service that God calls us to in response to his birth in Jesus Christ.

Our Scripture tells us that when the Magi left the presence of the baby Jesus they “returned home by another direction.” (Matthew 2:12)  Let each of us who have come into the presence of the truth of Jesus Christ, made manifest in us by the gift of faith, leave this world as different people than when we entered it.

And let us live content that in the gift of faith in Jesus Christ we have been given everything we need.  For all of our seeking, all of our scrambling, let us never forget that God has already done the seeking, and God found you.