God’s Greatest Gift by Alicia Briscoe

 For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life. John 3:16

 What is the greatest gift you received from God? I’m sure you are like me; you can’t just name one because God gives the greatest gifts. From the beginning, God proved himself generous by creating us in His likeness and image along with a world of abundance. Although we may have a list of answers for this question, we all would say “The greatest gift God gave to us was Himself.”

God’s example of generosity so selfless, an act in human history so important: Jesus’ died on the cross for us, what love. There is nothing in the world more important than the unity of people and God, bringing eternal abundant life and promising that we are never alone. Sometimes we do not honor God as we should, in his unbounded generosity, he gave his best and most valuable, the only thing he had only one of – his Son. Instead of abandoning us or retaliating against us, he gave us a gift, the best gift that has ever been given: his Son, crucified and raised to life again.

Jesus dying on the cross is a display of the plenitude of divine love … of God’s giving repeatedly. The atonement is not a settling of accounts, an exaction of payment, or the calling in of a debt. It is a matter of God’s ceaseless generosity, of God’s graceful prodigality. We can’t fathom the generosity involved in the act of giving that happened on the cross nor begin to scratch the surface of understanding it. This gift is beyond measure, unarguably, the greatest expression of generosity ever. There is a saying that “You can’t out give God”, but we can show our gratitude for His generosity to us by serving where we can, sacrificing to meet others’ needs, and trying to embody God’s character of generosity in life.

Remember - God is a generous giver, but we can only see and enjoy God’s generosity when we love God with all our hearts, minds, and strength.