Your name is on it!

IT’S got our name on it” used to be the strapline for a well-known builders’ merchant and DIY supplier. Presumably it was meant to convey that the products sold were of a consistently high quality and could be trusted. However, the slogan changed when their stock expanded to include items that carried the producer’s name rather than the merchant’s – so their name was not on all of it!

As a child, the important thing for me at Christmas was whether or not my name was on it.

I am referring to the collection of brightly wrapped presents at the base of our Christmas tree each year. If my name did not appear on a parcel it was of no interest, but those with my name on the gift tag aroused a great deal of excited anticipation.

Christmas is when we celebrate God’s gift and it is a gift with your name on it – yes, yours! This is expressed in the most famous verse in the Bible, “For God so loved the world (you included) that he gave his one and only Son …”

That’s the gift, a person, a very special person, God’s holy Son, Jesus Christ, born in Bethlehem. As C S Lewis put it, “God has landed on this enemyoccupied planet in human form”. You may also feature in the next phrase of the Bible verse, “… that whoever (your name could be there!) believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life” (John 3:16 NIV).

So God’s free gift to us is to be received, trustingly welcomed to accomplish the most significant personal rescue one can ever experience – release from the awful consequences of our self-pleasing, imperfect lives into a wonderful relationship with God.

Christ “was put to death and then made alive – to bring us to God” (1 Peter 3:18,19 The Message). This intimate relationship will result in a new, fulfilling quality of life, free from guilt and fear, that will come to its full potential in the presence of God for ever.

Remember ‘your name is on it’; Happy Christmas!