This gift from God deserves every bit of the attention and love and respect and fine-tuning that you can give it for your entire life.
Because this gift is truly one of a kind, fashioned by a Master.
The gift God gives to you is YOU!
God is gift-wrapping you FOR you so that you'll finally unwrap all that you are, all that you've never really paid attention to, even though you're one of a kind, fashioned by a Master.
God is gift-wrapping you FOR you so that you can begin to love yourself and dream of all that you can become - because God's glory is YOU, fully alive.
The wrapping paper is your wonderful body. Young or old, disabled or strong, it is your body, and God finds you beautiful indeed.
Inside the wrapping paper lie your mind, your heart, your soul. Your memories. Your dreams. Your failures. Take each piece of you out and look at it, precious and sparkling. Even the failures! God has re-finished each part of you for Christmas so you can begin again, more humbly this time. More accepting of all that has happened in your life. More trusting in Him. So you can shine more brightly than the Star which led the Magi to the stable.
God calls you on Christmas to come nearer to Him, to step into the stable, to kneel down, to look down into the eyes of the Holy Child. In those eyes, you will see yourself reflected with perfect love, purity, and truth. The more clearly you see yourself, fresh and new, in the eyes of the innocent Babe, the more deeply you will understand that you are a present from God, a gift to yourself and a gift to the world, as God's Son is a gift to the world.
All that God asks is that you be present to this marvelous present of yourself. You have been created by God to participate in God's own Divine Being, to share in God's own Divine goodness. The nearer you come to God, the more you will be empowered by Him to reach for and fashion your own destiny, the one He has foreseen for you for all ages. What God has started by creating you, God will finish, by empowering you to become your very self!
God has created you to shine more brightly than the Star which led the Magi to the Christ Child. God has created you to become a Star who can lead others through their own dark wilderness to the very stable where you have knelt - so they too can kneel and see themselves reflected in the searing, soaring Beauty of God's own limitless eyes.
Unwrap the gift of yourself carefully and reverently this Christmas. God is giving you the gift of New Beginnings. The gift of who you really are: a Sacred Star who can dance even in the darkness of a night sky, and, in simply being yourself, will lead others to Bethlehem.