pilgrim in progress

This Christmas at the Austin Stone we are preaching through various prayers from the Valley of Vision. Few books have helped stir my prayers and worship like this one. If you don’t have a copy of these Puritan prayers buy it today, or ask for it for Christmas! The prayer below is the only prayer in the book specific to Christmas - it is called The Gift of Gifts:

O Source of all Good,

What shall I render to Thee for the gift of gifts,
   thine own dear Son, begotten, not created,
   my Redeemer, proxy, surety, substitute,
   his self-emptying incomprehensible,
   his infinity of love beyond the heart’s grasp.

Herein is wonder of wonders:
   he came below to raise me above,
   was born like me that I might become like him.

Herein is love:
   when I cannot rise to him he draws near on wings of grace, to raise me to himself.

Herein is power:
   when Deity and humanity were infinitely apart
   he united them in indissoluble unity, the uncreated and the created.

Herein is wisdom:
   when I was undone, with no will to return to him, and no intellect to devise recovery,
   he came, God-incarnate, to save me to the uttermost,
        as man to die my death,
                    to shed satisfying blood on my behalf,
                    to work out a perfect righteousness for me.

O God, take me in spirit to the watchful shepherds and enlarge my mind; 
let me hear good tidings of great joy,
   and hearing, believe, rejoice, praise, adore
   my conscience bathed in an ocean of repose
   my eyes uplifted to a reconciled Father;
place me with ox, ass, camel, goat
   to look with them upon my Redeemer’s face,
   and in him account myself delivered from sin;
let me with Simeon clasp the new-born child to my heart,
   embrace him with undying faith,
   exulting that he is mine and I am his.

In him thou has given me so much that heaven can give no more. 

~The Valley of Vision, The Gift of Gifts, p. 16