Merry Christmas! I pray that this will be a sweet day of rest and remembrance for you—a day in which you will be able to rest from your normal labors to remember our Savior’s birth. As you do so, perhaps you will be blessed by this old prayer drawn from The Valley of Vision. It will call you to marvel at the wonder of God made man, of deity meeting humanity.
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,
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 meto 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 muchthat heaven can give no more.
