We have officially wrapped up our Fall and Christmas season-it was a great one! We wanted to say thanks for your support and that we look forward to seeing you next year! For this season, we want to leave you with these thoughts:
Excerpt from Ann Voskamp’s book, “The Greatest Gift”:
“Mordecai-he was in sackcloth outside the palace gate. He sent word to his niece, chosen queen to the king, to never forget the plight of those collected on the other side of the gate: ‘Don’t think for a moment that because you’re in the palace you will escape when all other Jews are killed. If you keep quiet at a time like this, deliverance and relief for the Jews will arise from some other place, but you and your relatives will die.’
It comes like a whisper from those outside the gate: You’ve got to use the life you’ve been given to give others life.
You’ve got gifts that weren’t given to line your life with; they were given to be a lifeline to others-or you lose your life. It comes like an echo from God: if your gifts don’t give relief, you don’t get real life. What does it profit a man to gain the whole world but lose his own soul?
It comes as a message for Advent, the Mordecai message for such a time as now:
You’ve got to use your position inside the gate for those outside the gate.
If you have any food in your fridge, any clothes in your closet, any small roof, rented or owned, over your head,
you are richer than 75 percent of the world.
We are the ones living inside the gate.
If you have anything saved in the bank, any bills in your wallet, any spare change in a jar,
you are one of the top 8 percent wealthiest people in the world.
We are the ones living inside the gate.
If you can read these words right now,
you have a gift 3 billion people right now don’t.
If your stomach isn’t twisted in hunger pangs,
you have a gift 1 billion people right now don’t.
If you know Christ as the Greatest Gift,
you have a gift that untold millions of people right now don’t.
We are the one living inside the gate.
Esther puts herself in the place of those outside the gate and makes herself the bridge to the King. And the woman given gifts for such a time as this-she risks her position for the people. If I perish, I perish.
There’s a boy right now splayed in the slum and sewage of Kolkata.
A child crying weak for food in Uganda, this haunting plea like the last cry of a raven.
And there’s One whose home was the original palace, One who is the apex of beauty, One who put Himself in the place of you outside the gate, you in the much and the mire and the stench of sin. There is One who came to a barn and made Himself a bridge back to the King by laying down His back on the bark of that Tree.
He looked at you desperate on the outside of the gate and His love was instant.
He didn’t ponder, If I perish, I perish.
He promised, “So I perish, I perish.”
This is the love story that has been coming for you since the beginning. The Babe in the manger-He is the Prince on the cross who saves you with His life, so your identity is no longer wrapped up in being one of the rich ones inside the gate. Your identity is wrapped up in being one of the rich ones inside of Him.
When you unwrap your worth in the Gift of Christ, you release your grip on all the other gifts. You are loved and carried and secure, and what else do you need when you have Him? You are free to lavishly give away your gifts when all your value, worth joy and riches are in the greatest of gifts.
You can see it during Advent-over on the west side, over in the slum, over the backyard fence-the way someone reaches out a hand and someone weak grabs hold. And all the gates give way to God.
For such a time as this.”
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