It’s Christmas morning, my kids are stirring, Major Dickason’s coffee is ready, Narnia’s soundtrack is in the background. I sit here thinking, praying, hoping the love of God fills our living room as we soon give gifts to one another.

To ask that God would fill this room would at first seem to mean this room is bigger than God. Quickly one realizes, though, that God who is bigger than this room and bigger than the whole world would in fact be entering this small room. 

But why would he come? Because he has already come dwelling and resting on earth in Jesus. We are not in giving gifts doing something that is strange or foreign to God. We are neither doing something that he forces us to do. Why will we give gifts to each other this morning? Is it because the other person has loved us? Are we somehow repaying them for their love? No, we are not giving gifts because they have loved us. We are giving gifts because we love them. Love gives. 

Why did God give us his son? Because we loved him? No. God gave us his son because he loved us. God so loved the world.

The grand miracle of Christmas is that God became flesh in Jesus Christ, so that all who would receive him might enter into the greatness of the love of God, might become something more: children of God. 

As a father there is great joy and anticipation at the thought of giving gifts to my wife and children. But it is a faint glimpse, a faint echo, of the joy and anticipation and love that filled the Father’s heart on that night when he gave his son to the world. 

That same joy, anticipation, and love still fills his heart. God the Father still gives good gifts to the world today. He gives them in Jesus. All of God’s gifts are found and wrapped up in him. “And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and we have seen his glory, glory as of the only Son from the Father, full of grace and truth.” (John 1:14).