HEARTS AFLAME: DIVINE GIFT OF LIFE AND PEACE

The Greatest Gift Arrived on Christmas Day

For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life. – John 3:16

The night of 24th December 2002, Christmas Eve, at Mt Elizabeth Hospital, the whole family gathered around my mother, who was breathing her last. We spent the final moments praying, speaking to her and committing her into the loving hands of our Lord God.

The following day on 25th December 2002, Christmas Day, Salem Chapel was holding a Christmas outreach event. Many of us in the family were involved in the play “The Reason He Came”. And, not many from the church knew that my mother had just passed on the night before.  

It was so surreal for my family members and I to hold back our grief and still be joining in the outreach event on that day. But something about the Christmas Day made that day so special.  

It reminded me that God gave the greatest gift of all. The gift of His Son, Jesus Christ, that all who believed in Him will have eternal life.  

My mother was about the last in the family to come to know the Lord. She was in her fifties, a very religious woman and one who was so dead-set on her Chinese ancestral beliefs and practices. Until she encountered the love of God and the Gospel of Jesus Christ that transformed her life in June 1978. Her life became changed from a life of appeasing the gods for fear of punishments and seeking divine blessings to one where her countenance exuded confidence, joy and peace. My mother knew her life was secured and sealed in Jesus Christ, her Lord and Saviour.  

The Psalmist said in Psalm 30:11-12:

[11] You turned my wailing into dancing;

    you removed my sackcloth and clothed me with joy,

[12] that my heart may sing your praises and not be silent.

Lord my God, I will praise you forever.

It is the love of God for His creation that made every Christmas Day so significant.

It was this gift of Christmas that turned our grief into dancing and our sackcloth into a garment of joy.

It was the gift of Jesus, and the reason He became incarnate, that gives us comfort, hope and eternal life.

Christmas and the Reason He Came; Jesus Christ, our Lord and Saviour; the Love of God now revealed; that is truly the One Big and Wonderful Gift to receive today.  

Christmas, isn’t Christmas, till it happened in your heart.  

Is that what Christmas meant for you as well?  

Have you received this gift too?

ABOUT THE AUTHOR :

PASTOR NEO BAN HUI is senior pastor of Salem Chapel and Chairman of Singapore Centre for Global Missions. 

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