The Gift of All Gifts

A Christmas Prayer from the Puritans

O Source of all good things, what shall I give to you for the gift of all gifts, Your own dear Son, begotten, not created, my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute, His self-emptying incomprehensible, His infinity of love beyond the heart’s ability to grasp.

Herein is the wonder of wonders; He came below to raise me above, was born like me that I might become like Him.

Herein is love; when I cannot rise to Him, He draws near on wings of grace, to lift me up to Himself.

Herein is power; when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart, He united them in an indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom; when I was undone, with no will to seek Him, and no intellect to devise my recovery, He came to me, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost, as a man to die my death, to shed His debt-satisfying blood on my behalf, to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds, enlarge my mind; let me hear good tidings of great joy, and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore, my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose, my eyes lifted to a reconciled Father; place me with ox, ass, camel, and goat, to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face, and in Him account myself delivered from sin; let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my breast, embracing Him with undying faith, exclaiming that He is mine and I am His.

In Him You have given me so much that heaven can give no more. Amen.