Receiving A Wonderful Gift

RECEIVING A WONDERFUL GIFT

The only son of a very wealthy man had his 21st birthday on Christmas Day. His mother gave him some gold cufflinks and engraved gold pens. His uncle and aunt bought him a set of TaylorMade R9 golf clubs that combined Flight Control Technology and Moveable Weight Technology, with which he was delighted as he was a keen golfer.

And he expected to receive a sports car from his Dad, as he had dropped many heavy hints over the course of the previous year. Instead his Dad told him that he loved him and handed him a wrapped-up present. When he opened it, he found it to be a box containing a leather bound Bible, with his name inscribed on the spine.

Angrily the young man tossed the box and Bible aside and stormed out saying, "With all your money, all you can give me is a Bible!" And they never spoke again, despite the fact that the young man’s father tried hard to contact him.

Years later, he got a call from his Uncle to say his Dad had died, leaving him everything. As he was going through his father’s belongings, he found that Bible still in its box. Curious, he took the Bible out of the box and opened it.

The page fell open at a passage his father had marked. And as he looked at the page, he noticed that his Dad had underlined Mt. 7:11, "If you then being evil know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more shall your Father give what is good to those who ask Him."

And as he read it, a car key fell from inside the Bible. It had a tag with the dealer’s name on it--for the sports car that he had wanted years earlier. On the tag beside the date of his 21st birthday he read the words: "Paid in full love, Dad."

On that first Christmas Day, God gave the world the greatest Christmas present of all: the gift of His son Jesus Christ.