Don’t you just love gifts? I’m not talking about those hokey email scams where someone wants to give you $3.5 million if you will just send them all your private, financial information. I’m talking about real gifts whether they are wrapped up in ribbons or wrapped up in hugs. I don’t know about you but I love gifts. Jesus is telling us that God has a gift for us: the kingdom. This is not a gift that comes out of obligation but is given with God’s “good pleasure.”

And it is a surprise gift, as well. Sometimes gifts surprise us because we didn’t expect a gift at all but we get one, anyway. Other gifts surprise us because we were not expecting this particular gift. But there is another kind of surprise present where we keep discovering new things about the gift as time goes by. This is the k…