Who as a kid has experienced the joy and magic of Christmas, when gifts appeared in abundance under the tree on Christmas morning? This rich experience provides a great jumping off point to understand and appreciate what God our Father has prepared for each one of us who are determined to come home to Him.

The small child is unaware of the great pains mom and dad go through to make his or her Christmas as perfect and happy as possible.

So, too, we children of the Father receive a blessing and gift beyond all measure because of the supreme sacrifice of Christ. It is proof of the extravagant love God wants to share with us. A love that is very near and real – grounded in space and time – and yet other-worldly and totally beyond our grasp.

This is what separates Christianity from myths and fairy tales. The bliss and unending happiness we all aspire to – a poor semblance of what God wants to give us – is made possible by the love and blood of a God, a God-man to be precise. It is so very real.

Why don’t we sense or recognize Heaven? Because we don’t live by the power of God.

And how do we do that?

When we live by faith, we live by the Father’s power.

Remember the mustard seed. Jesus pointed out that the size of the mustard seed wasn’t a factor in the spectacular growth it produced. So what is the deciding factor in faith that moves mountains?

It can only be the singularity and purity of faith. To live by faith, we must make a gift of our whole self to the Father. We must not hold anything back.

When we are ready to do the Father’s will, to join our sacrifice to Christ’s, then we gain all.

The man who makes a gift of his whole self appears to lose himself. But, in fact, he really comes to possess himself as the Father’s child, whence he can do all things.

God, through Jesus, has shown us the way to be other Christs – to bring Christmas or gifts of Life to all.

And what is Christmas. Remember that feeling of Christmas morning again. It was all about giving or receiving gifts – not for anything anyone did, but because the giver wants to surprise with kindness and love.

Another form of a gift is having a heavy burden taken away. It is like having a debt – a huge debt – removed all at once by someone else’s generosity. Jesus did that. By becoming flesh, He released us from the debt to our flesh.

And so we have been made debt free and, to top it all off, we have this unimaginable reward of Heaven awaiting us. It is a reward that takes all of our deepest yearnings and then surpasses them by magnitudes beyond counting. It is all gift. It is like Christmas.