Let me tell you a story about a family whose house burned down. Their little girl in that family was named Victoria. A couple years ago during Thanksgiving their home burned to the ground. Fortunately they were not home, but everything was lost.

Their next-door neighbors have an 8-year-old son named Ian who is a good friend of Victoria. A few days after the fire, Victoria's father returned to the burned house to see if he could find anything useful in the wreckage. He looked up and saw Ian coming in his direction carrying a round Styrofoam cooler in a wheelbarrow. Ian opened the top of the cooler proudly, displaying thousands of pennies that his family had been saving since he was two-years-old. He handed the cooler to Victoria's dad and said, "I want you to use this to buy a Christmas present for Victoria."

At first he thought he must decline the gift, but something in Ian's eyes just wouldn't let him. The boy's expression was so full of love. So he hugged him and said, "Thank you very much."

Thankfully, most of us have not experienced the horror of burned-down houses, but many of us have very definite hurts and longings this Advent season. The Messiah comes to us in the spirit of Ian, offering himself as our gift. How strange it is that when we accept the gift of the Messiah, it matches exactly our hurt and need. When we tie our destiny to this Messiah-King, we can face whatever the future brings, knowing that we are more than conquerors through Christ who loves us.