The Gift

For years as a child and a teenager I could barely go to sleep on Christmas Eve. I could not wait to see what things were waiting for me under the tree. I recall the year I got the bike of my dreams. I recall getting footballs and football uniforms. One year I even got a Mr. Quarterback, a machine to throw me passes, but it broke before I ever used it. I got toys galore, clothes, and a shotgun when I got older.

My favorite gift of all was on my twelfth Christmas when I got an electric typewriter because I always wanted to be a writer. I sat that typewriter on my desk and let my imagination begin to run wild with short stories. I guess that gift means so much to me because today, though that typewriter is long gone, I am still writing and living out that dream about to publish my sixth book.

I loved everything about Christmas as a child. The decorations. The lights on houses. The special movies. Making my wish list. The candy canes hung our tree I ate throughout the month of December. I guess I loved Christmas so much because my mother loved Christmas.

As I got older I enjoyed giving gifts when I earned money. I especially loved giving to my mother and grandparents. I can still recall the anticipation of watching them open the gifts I had purchased for them with my hard earned money. Those are blessed memories. Around my fifteenth Christmas my grandfather died. He was like a father to me and we shared a special bond. I still enjoyed that Christmas  but it was different. I missed him.

My seventeenth Christmas I received the greatest gift. I still treasure that Christmas gift to this day. Try as I may I cannot remember any other gifts that morning but that one special one. It was a gift to go down in the history of all my Christmas pasts. I may have received some clothes that morning but nothing else comes to mind and certainly not surpasses that one gift in my mind and heart. Truth be told it was an unexpected gift.

O but that gift I received came to mean more to me that year than anything else under that tree. You see the gift I received when I was seventeen was the eternal gift of salvation and forgiveness of sins through Jesus Christ. I actually received that in October of 1983 but it came into clearer focus that 1983 Christmas morning. That gift changed everything. For the first time that year Christmas was about the birth of Jesus for me. Being a new convert to Christ that meant everything to me and three decades later it still does. My family openly celebrates Jesus during Christmas. That gift changed my life inwardly and outwardly.

In the months that followed I would buy a Bible and begin to devour it. I would join the Denman Avenue Baptist Church by baptism. I would get active in the youth group and other church services. I would hear and answer God's invitation to preach though scared out of my mind to say yes. Through the avenue of a football scholarship God put me in college to get training for preaching and ministry. God orchestrated events far beyond my imagination to introduce me to a Godly girl from the Metroplex who captured my heart. Three years later I stood before God, family, and friends and married Brenda Ortiz. To this day she is still my best friend. We laugh together often, love and serve God together, and were blessed with Jennifer to raise and then four boys.

Today I drive the third miracle vehicle we have been given. We live in a beautiful home far beyond our wildest dreams and I get to have a home office. I am living out my dreams as a pastor, author, and traveling preacher.

All of that goes back to the gift of salvation I received in Jesus Christ. That gift has never meant more to me than it does on this my 47th Christmas. The Apostle sums up my sentiments far better than I ever could.

And you were dead in your trespasses and sins, in which you formerly walked according to the course of this world, according to the prince of the power of the air of the spirit that is now working in the sons of disobedience. Among them we too all formerly lived in the lusts of our flesh indulging the desires of the flesh and of the mind and were by nature children of wrath even as the rest. But God, being rich in mercy because of His great love with which He loved us, even when we were dead in our transgressions made us alive together with Christ and raised us up with Him and seated us with Him in the heavenly places in Christ, so that in the ages to come He might show the surpassing riches of His grace in kindness toward us in Christ Jesus. For by grace you have been saved through faith; and that not of yourselves it is the gift of God; not as a result of works so that no one can boast. [Gal 2:1-9]

He brought me to life spiritually. He raised me from the dead end path I was walking and set me on the path to eternity. He lavished me with His rich mercy for my sins were many. He gave me a seat at His table and made one of His children. I have a place to belong. He will put me on display through the ages to demonstrate what His gift of grace can do in a person's life. I am blessed beyond measure this Christmas gift because I have already received the greatest gift.