I hope everyone was pleased with the gifts they may have received during their Christmas celebrations. As grandparents, my wife and I delighted in the presence of our children and grandchildren as we celebrated together Jesus’ Nativity.

Which raises the subject of the proverbial “reason for the season.” My hope is that Mere Inkling’s friends will know the deep and lasting joy of receiving our Creator’s most precious gift.

In 1958, C.S. Lewis wrote to an American correspondent about one obstacle to receiving God’s gifts. He cited an observation by Saint Augustine that if we are too busy grasping less important things, we can miss out on what is truly priceless.

St. Augustine says “God gives where He finds empty hands.” A man whose hands are full of parcels can’t receive a gift.

Augustine was an ancient African bishop. One of his Christmas sermons has survived and remains quite inspiring sixteen centuries after it was first preached. I encourage you to bask in the glow of the following excerpt.

So then, let us celebrate the birthday of the Lord with all due festive gatherings. Let men rejoice, let women rejoice. Christ has been born, a man; he has been born of a woman; and each sex has been honored.

Now therefore, let everyone, having been condemned in the first man [Adam], pass over to the second. It was a woman who sold us death; a woman who bore us life. The likeness of the flesh of sin [Romans 8] has been born, so that the flesh of sin might be cleansed and purified.

And thus it is not the flesh that is to be faulted, but the fault that must die in order that the nature may live; because One has been born without fault, in whom the other who was at fault may be reborn.

Rejoice, you just; it is the birthday of the Justifier. Rejoice, you who are weak and sick; it is the birthday of the Savior, the Healer. Rejoice, captives; it is the birthday of the Redeemer.

Rejoice, slaves; it is the birthday of the one who makes you lords. Rejoice, free people; it is the birthday of the one who makes you free. Rejoice, all Christians; it is the birthday of Christ.

Rejoice, one and all. God’s undeserved gift to each of us, for all those willing to receive it, is forgiveness and eternal life. 

In his book The Problem of Pain, C.S. Lewis elaborates on the Augustinian analogy shared above.

Everyone has noticed how hard it is to turn our thoughts to God when everything is going well with us. We “have all we want” is a terrible saying when “all” does not include God. We find God an interruption.

As St Augustine says somewhere, “God wants to give us something, but cannot, because our hands are full – there’s nowhere for Him to put it.” Or as a friend of mine said, “We regard God as an airman regards his parachute; it’s there for emergencies but he hopes he’ll never have to use it.”

Now God, who has made us, knows what we are and that our happiness lies in Him. Yet we will not seek it in Him as long as He leaves us any other resort where it can even plausibly be looked for. While what we call “our own life” remains agreeable we will not surrender it to Him.

What then can God do in our interests but make “our own life” less agreeable to us, and take away the plausible sources of false happiness? It is just here, where God’s providence seems at first to be most cruel, that the Divine humility, the stooping down of the Highest, most deserves praise.

Remember friends, our celebration of the Messiah’s entrance into our world is not limited to a single day, or even a brief season. Every single day we can rejoice at the miracle of the Incarnation and the fact that God loved us enough to send his Son to redeem us.