Ephesians 2:8-9
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God. Not by works, so that no one can boast."
I have a problem with gifts. Not receiving them. I love receiving them. My problem is that I feel like I have to earn them. When someone gives me something, my first instinct is to calculate what I owe them. To figure out how to repay the favor. To make sure the ledger stays balanced. I think this is true for a lot of us. We are uncomfortable with free. We do not trust it. We assume there is a catch.
And then there is the gift of God. Salvation. Grace. The entire Christmas story wrapped up in one impossible reality. God looked at humanity. At me. At my mess. At my failures. At my half-hearted prayers and my selective obedience and my endless self-focus. And He said, "I love them. I am going to save them. And I am not going to charge them for it." That is grace. Unearned. Unmerited. Unpayable. A gift so large that the only appropriate response is to stop trying to pay for it and just receive it.
Not by works, so that no one can boast. This is the great leveler. The rich cannot buy it. The poor cannot earn it. The religious cannot achieve it. The irreligious cannot stumble into it. It is a gift. Period. The baby in the manger is grace with skin on. He did not come because we were good. He came because we were lost. He did not come to reward the righteous. He came to create them. Everything about Christmas says, "You cannot do this yourself. But I can. And I will. And I have."
I think about the times I have tried to earn God's love. The extra prayers. The extra service. The extra guilt. The extra performance. All of it rooted in the lie that God's love is conditional. That if I just do enough, give enough, be enough, then maybe He will finally be satisfied with me. But the manger says no. The cross says no. The empty tomb says no. God's love is not a wage. It is a gift. And gifts are not earned. They are received.
The hardest thing for me to do is nothing. To stop striving. To stop performing. To stop trying to prove my worth and just let God's grace wash over me like a wave. But that is exactly what He is asking. Put down the ledger. Stop keeping score. Stop trying to pay for what has already been paid for. The gift is here. It has been here since Bethlehem. It is wrapped in swaddling clothes and it is free. All you have to do is open your hands.
"For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith. And this is not from yourselves, it is the gift of God."
Today I am opening my hands. I am not bringing anything to the table. No resume. No achievements. No excuses. No explanations. Just my empty hands and my open heart. The gift is here. It has always been here. And it is enough. More than enough. It is everything.
With the twenty-third candle glowing and my hands finally, blessedly empty, I am receiving the gift I could never earn and will never stop being grateful for. Claire