The Weekly Encourager – December 25, 2015 – Christmas Prayer

This year three families of friends enjoyed Christmas dinner together. Before we sat down to eat, our host read aloud this prayer from “The Valley of Vision,” a fine collection of Puritan prayers.

“The Gift of Gifts”

What shall I render to You for the gift of gifts;
Your own dear Son, begotten not created,
My Redeemer, my proxy, my surety, my substitute;
Self-emptying, incomprehensible;
His infinity of love beyond the heart's grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:
He came below to raise me above,
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, let me believe, rejoice, praise, adore,
My conscience bathed in an ocean of repose,
My eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;

Place me with ox, donkey, 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 you have given me so much
That heaven can give no more.

- Anon. in The Valley of Vision: A Collection of Puritan Prayers and Devotions, edited by Arthur Bennett

There are many good gifts to thank God for, but the first and best Gift of Christmas is Christ. Merry Christmas!
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