What is the best gift you have ever received in your life? What is the gift you are now expecting to receive (maybe from someone you love)? What is the gift you are so much thankful for that you will never forget the giver?

When we were kids, we must be very excited when someone gave a gift for our birthday, especially if the gifts were a particular things we had longed for. Even now as adults, we can still feel the joy of receiving gifts, awards, appreciation, blessings, and so forth you can name it. Some people are happy with the gifts because they represent the sincere loving care of the giver, no matter how much the value of the gifts. Some other people feel more satisfied when the gifts are given upon their achievements.

There are some gifts that are given out of love: out of the giver’s initiative in the first place (we may call it “present”). And some gifts are given only upon the successful effort of the receiver (we may call it “award”). The excitement comes when we know that our labor and pain deserves the gift. That’s quite normal. But… when you know that even though you do not deserve the gift yet you receive it anyway, how would you feel?

You must have realized that the happiness, excitement, joy, pleasure, satisfaction (and so forth you name it) of receiving gifts are temporal feelings; they would not last long. Those feelings could change swiftly and even turn into the opposite within seconds. Pain and pleasure come and go in turn. We get tired and sick of it. We are never truly satisfied. Why? Because they are actually not what we really need in this life. There is something better, higher, and deeper in our hearts that we are actually longing for. To be more specific, we all need something that is ETERNAL, UNCHANGED, and IMMORTAL.

The good news is that this eternal, unchanged, and immortal gift is already available for us to pick up! Where can we find it? Thankfully, everything now can be found easily in the Google 🙂 Just type a keyword “the gift of eternal life” and it will direct you to the good news:

For the wages of sin is death, but the gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord.

(Romans 6:23, NIV)

Vancouver, September 17, 2016