The Greatest Gift to Give This Christmas

There are some of us (which, really means: all of us) who come from a long, long line of broken and busted up people. 

A line of hurting and selfishness and unforgiveness that cuts deep and runs on and on and ends up sprouting roots of bitterness and stifles love and slaughters relationships.

And no matter how perfect any family appears on the outside not one person is untouched from the Fall and every single soul is in desperate need of forgiveness. 

The only hope all of us ever have is the Messiah who was wrapped in swaddling cloths and placed in a manger, with the full purpose to be one day stripped of his clothes and nailed to a cross so that He could make us new, and 'though our sins are like scarlet, they shall be as white as snow', and cover us with His righteousness. 

For days I've been thinking about my own hurting family line and how I could relate to this:

"You can stand around a Christmas tree with a family like Joseph's, with cheaters and beaters and receivers, with a family like Jacob's, who ran away and ran around and ran folks down. But out of a family line that looks like a mess, God brings the Messiah." {Ann Voskamp. The Greatest Gift, emphasis mine.}

For days I've been thinking about mercy and grace and forgiveness.

It's never neat and tidy, never perfect and pretty. It's never easy or even our default, but it is possible. There is one way to forgiveness and it cuts away the bitterness and grows love and restores relationship. 

And even though many of us imperfect people will meet with imperfect families over the next few weeks during the Christmas holidays, and some may be dreading it, there is this mercy: our Messiah reached down into our mess to redeem us from the fall and place us in His family and calls us to live in grace, grow in love, and give the gift of forgiveness and it is all made possible by His righteousness alone.

The greatest gift we, the ones who have been grafted into His family tree and given so much, could give one another this Christmas is forgiveness, wrapped in grace and humility, served with love.

There are some of us who are slowly realizing that better than perfect is grace, better than health is holiness, better than fortune is forgiveness, better than anything this world could offer is the God of all mercy who made this world to be in an intimate relationship with us.