"As we go through this season of thanksgiving and gift giving, let's never lose sight of The Gift that was given by God in the manger, and the Ultimate Gift given by Jesus on the cross."

Garrison Keillor, author of the nostalgic Lake Wobegon books and host of radio’s “A Prairie Home Companion,” recalled his childhood Thanksgiving dinners as the family gathered around the table and remembered the blessings of the past year. Uncle John usually gave the prayer, which caused everyone to squirm. As Keillor said,

"Everybody in the family knew that Uncle John couldn’t pray without talking about the cross and crying. Sure enough, Uncle John prayed, talked about the cross, and cried. Meanwhile, the rest of us shifted nervously from one foot to the other and longed for the prayer to end.” Then Keillor adds this powerful observation: “All of us knew that Jesus died on the cross for us, but Uncle John had never gotten over it."

(from “Standing in the Light of the Cross” by Bill Bouknight, Good News Mar./Apr. 2002, p. 21.)

When we consider being thankful and receiving gifts, what are the gifts we are the most appreciative of? In my life, it is the ones I could have never gotten for myself. When it comes to the price of our salvation, the cost was so high the human mind can barely fathom it.

In Matthew 18, Jesus tells of the man who owed 10,000 talents and was forgiven, and then turned around and demanded payment from the person who owed him 100 denarii.

Let’s do the math…

• One denarius was one day’s wage, so 100 denarii was 100 days wages.
• It took 6000 denarii to make one talent. How many work days is that?
• It would be roughly 20 years of wages to repay just ONE talent.
• That’s around 200,000 years of labor!

That’s an unbelievable debt that no one could ever hope to pay. And that’s the magnitude of the debt we owed for our sin in God’s eyes. That is a gift we should be overwhelmed with thankfulness about – I hope we never get over it!

As we go through this season of thanksgiving and gift giving, let’s never lose sight of The Gift that was given by God in the manger, and the Ultimate Gift given by Jesus on the cross. Nothing else compares.

Our salvation was purchased on the cross, and we get to spend our entire lives as a love gift back to Him who saved us. Many times, I am struck by the wonderful gifts I have been given: a faithful wife and children who all love the Lord, a job I enjoy, and a church body that lives out the gospel.

The One Thing that makes all of these blessings possible is the Greatest Gift of All – JESUS.