Encore Post: Everyone loves receiving gifts. They show us that we are appreciated and that someone was thinking about us. This is true even when it comes from someone you love. Of course a young woman loves to receive an engagement ring. It not only shows her that her boyfriend cares about her, but it carries with it a promise. The day soon will come when he will make her his bride. It is filled with visions of a happy life, children and the hope that she will not be alone as long as they both live. It is likely the ring is not the first gift that she received from him or gave to him. And it will not be the last. Yet she would never consider returning a gift from her beloved. Each new gift comes with the same reminded that she is loved.
God the Holy Spirit gives to us many gifts. The Means of Grace are the most precious of them. While they are simple in form — written words on a page or said by a man, water poured on your head, bread and wine eaten with other very ordinary people — they are precious gifts. All of them come with the power of the Holy Spirit to create faith in our hearts, make a new Adam or Eve within us who loves God and wants to serve him and gives us the forgiveness of sins, life and salvation. In the waters of baptism, we are adopted as God’s children. With the bread and wine of the Lord’s Supper, with eat the body of our Lord broken on the cross to pay for our sins and drink the blood of the Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world. In Absolution, we hear the words of Jesus that our sins are forgiven in the voice of the one sent to say them to us.
These are gifts that produce more gifts. love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. These gifts serve God and our neighbors and testify that God is indeed good. (Galatians 5:22-23)
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