I recently read an intriguing novel titled Retribution ...

... by one of my favorite authors, Randy Ingermanson. A thread running through it repeats this premise: “Great sacrifice releases great power.”

Interesting concept. Could it be true? Could it be a Life Truth?

I believe it’s worthy of the test.

Psalm 50:23 says, “He who sacrifices thank offerings honors Me, and he prepares the way so that I may show him the salvation of God.”

Saying “thank you” can be a sacrifice if we’re having a hard time at the moment.

And wouldn’t the salvation – deliverance, help, intervention – of God be a pretty good representation of great power?

I didn’t know I could prepare the way for God to work in my life. I didn’t know that my sacrifices of “thank you” would open the door for His power.

Wow. There's more to gratitude than I thought - especially in the wake of defeat, discouragement, illness, tragedy.

I’m not waiting until Thanksgiving.

What about you?

The Perfect Christmas Gift

If you were God, how would you introduce yourself to your creation?

I’d be 27 years old, a perfect size 8 with flawless complexion, no white hair and an IQ of 145.

I would not show up as a baby, completely helpless and totally dependent upon two people who arrived in town after all the motel rooms were taken and had to sleep in a lean-to. Or a cave.

Good thing I’m not God.

But why a baby?

It’s simple, really. God wanted to become a human, and there is only one way to become a human and that is to be born.

Humans can’t get away from sin. It’s an inherited trait – in the blood, so to speak. God chose to become a human so he could stop the endless cycle by paying man’s long-overdue sin account himself.

So He played by the rules and was born. But he bypassed the blood-born pathogen of sin through birth by a virgin – the virgin who conceived through the seed of God, not sin-filled man. The embryo she carried developed its own blood system, as do all human embryos, and since the mother’s blood does not mix with her baby’s, the baby inherited no sin.

A perfect human.

This god-man lived a sinless life, so when he was killed, his sin-less blood was undeserving of death, and in the eyes of God, that blood paid the penalty of sin and washed away mankind’s debt.

A perfect sacrifice.

Only God could come up with a plan like that.

But He didn’t just pay and run. He conquered death and lived again to walk beside us in our own life-living.

So, you see, Christmas is really all about sacrifice. Maybe that’s why red and green are such prominent seasonal colors: the blood-red ribbons that flow from our evergreen boughs remind of us the Perfect Life that gives the rest of us eternal, ever-life.

If we accept the gift.

And who could refuse a gift like that?