Someone told me about a man who got tired of the Christmas hoopla. All the frantic haste and the crass commercialism disgusted him. So, he decided not to go along with the crowd. Among other things, he decided not to send Christmas cards, feeling that the expense and effort were non-productive. For the first ten days of December he felt good about his decision. But then, as the mail brought him greetings from friends near and far, he began to feel more and more guilty about sending no cards. Finally, four days before Christmas, he couldn't stand it any longer. He rushed down to the drug store and grabbed the only box of cards still on the shelf. He bought it, purchased stamps, rushed home, and addressed cards frantically all evening. He addressed 49 cards. He had one card left over which he tossed on the mantle. That very evening he drove down to the post office and mailed the cards.

The next day he was strolling through the house and happened to see that extra card on the mantle. Suddenly it occurred to him that he had addressed and signed all those cards but had not actually read what the card said. So, he grabbed the card and took a look. This is what it said:

"This cheery card has come to say: A gift from us is on the way."

The whole meaning of the Advent season prior to Christmas is this: a gift from God is on the way. The basic reason we offer Christmas gifts to each other is to honor and reflect the only perfect gift ever offered--the gift of God through a Bethlehem baby named Jesus.

Gerald Horton Bath tells about a missionary in Africa who was teaching his students about gift giving at Christmas. On Christmas morning one of the Africans brought the missionary a seashell of lustrous beauty. When asked where he had discovered such an extraordinary shell, he said he had walked many miles to a certain bay, the only spot where such shells could be found. The teacher thanked him and said, "It was wonderful of you to travel so far to get this lovely gift for me." The African's eyes brightened and he responded: "Long walk, part of gift."

A perfect gift has two components: The giver puts something of himself into it; and the gift is suited to the needs of the recipient. When our loving God was brooding over this sin-scarred world filled with warring, selfish, corrupted people, he must have pondered at length over how to express his love to the world.

God knew that if he sent 10,000 more educators, the people would simply become more ingenious in their devilment.

God could have dropped tons of food to alleviate all hunger, but the people would have hoarded it rather than sharing it.

God could have sent a powerful general to clean up the mess by force. But God knew that power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. As soon as the good general was gone, everything would revert back to business as usual.

So, in an effort to give the perfect gift, God did not send a general or a politician or a preacher. God sent himself. Or, in the words of that late great preacher Wallace Hamilton, "God came walking down the stairway of heaven with a baby in his arms."

St. Paul conveyed this message beautifully to the first- century church in Galatia. Since the world began, said Paul, all people have been slaves to sin. But when the time was fully come, or just at the right time, "God sent forth His Son so that all persons could be liberated and redeemed, transformed from slaves into sons and daughters." (Galatians 4:04)

When I was a child one of the delights of Christmas morning was my stocking with my name on it. It hung from the mantle and bulged with surprises. It was not that any single item in it was all that valuable; but its amazing variety was delightful. Usually it contained several tangerines, a box of sparklers, a few firecrackers, bubble gum, perhaps a $5 bill, caps for my cowboy pistol, and a few sticks of licorice. What ever happened to licorice?

That stocking reminds me of the perfect gift of Christmas in one respect. The gift of Christ is a multi-faceted treasure. It is a miscellaneous array of the most needed items on earth. Let me mention four.

First, there is forgiveness.

Forgiveness is powerful wherever one encounters it, but it is absolutely life changing and soul- saving when dispensed by Jesus. Some psychiatrists say to guilty people, "Just don't feel that way. Lots of people have done far worse than you. You're suffering from nothing more than the hangover from a domineering parent." That's about as helpful as telling someone with a migraine headache to just try to think about something else and the pain will go away.

Sin goes too deep into the human psyche for superficial cures. Only the spirit of the living Christ can plumb those depths, freeing us from sin and teaching us to forgive ourselves. It's a miracle, a miracle made possible by the Cross, a miracle that happens each time one of us says to God sincerely, "I'm sorry, Lord. For Jesus' sake, please forgive."

A second gift offered by Christ is eternal life.

We who have dared to step out in faith and claim Jesus as Savior and Lord don't have to wonder where we will spend eternity. Our heavenly reservations were made that first moment when we repented of our sins and genuinely believed in Jesus as Lord. When we die and reach heaven's gates, no one will pull our records for judgment. The mark of Christ will be visible upon us. His righteousness will cover us and therefore the gates of heaven will be wide open for us.

A third gift Christ offers is a heart transplant.

Not the surgical variety. I refer to the change of values, attitudes, desires, and will caused by Christ living within us. He takes up residence in the depths of our subconscious and transforms us from the inside out.

A Harvard education is wonderful, but it will not necessarily touch the heart, the will, the values. You can take all of the Dale Carnegie courses but still not touch the heart, the will, the values. But when Christ is enthroned as Lord of one's life, he creates a fruit-basket turnover of everything in the heart, the will, the values. As the Bible declares, "If a person be in Christ, he is a new creation." (II Cor. 5:17)

A fourth gift offered by Christ is inner peace.

People who do not have inner peace have inner war, a war between their selfish desires and the ways of God. When a person becomes a Christian, the war ends, because self surrenders to Christ. In the wake of the surrender, Christ sends an inner tranquility that no tranquilizer on earth can touch. "My peace I give unto you," said Jesus, "not as the world gives do I give unto you. Let not your hearts be troubled, neither let them be afraid." (John 14:27)

So, there you have it--four special gifts that are part and parcel of the gift of Christ: forgiveness, eternal life, a heart transplant, and inner peace. What a precious array of the world's most needed assets! No wonder Phillips Brooks wrote in his Christmas carol, "The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight."

Why did God do it? The answer is clear is that most beloved verse in our Bible: "For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son so that whoever believes on him should not perish but have eternal life."

Several years ago a mother in Anderson, South Carolina, was very busy on Christmas Eve, wrapping packages and preparing to take her family to a Christmas Eve service that evening. Suddenly she realized that the shoes she planned to wear were scuffed up and badly needed a shine. She said to her eight-year-old son, who was bubbling with excited energy, "Would you take an old newspaper out on the back porch and try to shine my shoes without making a mess?"

Every child is eager to please on Christmas Eve, so off he went. In a little while he brought the shoes back nicely shined. The mother was so impressed that she reached into her pocketbook and gave him a quarter along with a hug and a thank-you. Later that evening when she was getting dressed, she started to put on a shoe but realized that something was inside it. She reached in and found a quarter wrapped in a piece of notebook paper. On the paper, written in a childish scrawl, was this message: "I done it for love."

The Bethlehem Christ-child, born to die on Calvary's Cross, is the ultimate expression of love. Therefore, he is the only perfect gift the world has ever known. Have you accepted that gift?