Your Presence Is Your Gift To God by Ann Voskamp
In these holy days, these holidays, the whirl of everything can hush, and the spin of everything can slow right down, because God blesses us with Himself, Love come down.
Come to Him just as you are, simply come.
Your presence is your gift to God—and God’s very real presence is His very real gift to you.
You always get your Christmas miracle. You get God with you.
Christmas time can be a time of much anxiety and the word in Greek for anxiety is merimna —- which means pieces. Much of the anxiousness around Christmas is a function of our attention be divided into pieces.
Come – simply give all your attention to Jesus who comes to literally be with you. Simply centre on the presence of Christ.
Jesus gives His presence to you as a gift and we only need to slow long enough to unwrap the greatest Gift with our time: time in His Word, time in His presence, time in prayer…. Time with Him.
God gives God. And He withholds no good thing from you. The truest good things in life are not so much perfect health, but perfect holiness in him; not so much riches in this world, but rich relationship with God; not so much our plans, but His presence—
God withholds no good thing from us because the greatest things aren’t ever things and He doesn’t withhold the presence of the saving love of Jesus from you.
Christ is all your good, and He is all yours, and this is always all your Christmas miracle. You are most prepared for Christmas when you are done trying to make your performance into the gift — and instead simply revel in His presence as the Gift.
And the greatest present you always have to give everyone else is the gift of Jesus non-anxious presence—looking into someone’s eyes as you listen, refusing rushing to simply linger long enough to really see and hear and love people.
When we make space in the PACE of things — for the presence of Emmanuel – we find PEACE.
This Christmas, simply make SPACE in your PACE for the presence of EMMANUEL … to find PEACE.
And peace is not the absence of problems, but the presence of God.
Peace isn’t a place, Peace is a Person. Peace is not a Place, you try escape to, out of your everyday life, but a Person whose presence you rest in every day of your life.
The miracle of Christmas is that you get more than proof of God’s existence.
You get the experience of God’s presence – and there is no need for more: The heart that lingers in the presence of Jesus – has every gift it needs.
The holy days always find a way –
to simply feel the greatest gift of His presence.