What Is The Perfect Gift?

I believe the perfect gift to give someone, and to receive yourself, is love.

Why love?

1st Corinthians 13: 4-8a tells us why love is the answer.

Love is large and incredibly patient. Love is gentle and consistently kind to all. It refuses to be jealous when blessing comes to someone else. Love does not brag about one’s achievements nor inflate its own importance. Love does not traffic in shame and disrespect, nor selfishly seek its own honor. Love is not easily irritated or quick to take offense. Love joyfully celebrates honesty and finds no delight in what is wrong. Love is a safe place of shelter, for it never stops believing the best for others. Love never takes failure as defeat, for it never gives up. Love never stops loving. (The Passion Translation)

Love comes from God, and He knows that we are empty without His love. So, that is why I believe that love is the perfect gift to receive for yourself, and then to freely give to others.

Those who are loved by God, let his love continually pour from you to one another, because God is love. Everyone who loves is fathered by God and experiences an intimate knowledge of him. The one who doesn’t love has yet to know God, for God is love. The light of God’s love shined within us when he sent his matchless Son into the world so that we might live through him. This is love: He loved us long before we loved him. It was his love, not ours. He proved it by sending his Son to be the pleasing sacrificial offering to take away our sins. Delightfully loved ones, if he loved us with such tremendous love, then “loving one another” should be our way of life!  ( 1 John 4: 7-11 – The Passion Translation)

Prayer:

Lord Jesus,

Thank you for the gift of receiving and giving love. May you teach us how to receive love, and then to be able to freely give it away. As we embrace and share your love, may it help us to know you better. Thank you, Lord Jesus. Amen.