This Christmas-focused prayer from The Valley Of Vision, a book of Puritan prayers, was very encouraging to me recently. In the midst of all the ginger-bread baking and wassailing, may you be refreshed in pausing to remember the one miracle that sparked all of this…
“O Source of all Good,
What shall I render to Thee for the gift of gifts,
Thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
my Redeemer, Proxy, Surety, Substitute,
His self-emptying incomprehensible,
His infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.
“Herein is wonder of wonders:
He came below to raise me above,
He 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 raise me to Himself.
“Herein is power;
when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
He united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.
“Herein is wisdom;
when I was undone, with no will to return to Him,
and no intellect to devise recovery,
He came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
as man to die my death,
to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
to work out a perfect righteousness for me.
“O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds,
and 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 uplifted to a reconciled Father,
place me with ox, ass, camel, 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 heart,
embrace Him with undying faith,
exulting that He is mine and I am His.
In Him Thou hast given me so much that heaven can give no more.”
Merry Christmas!
