The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the Full Love Story of Christmas
By Ann Voskamp
4.5/5
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About this ebook
Discover the New York Times bestselling Christmas classic—an annual bestseller with over 250,000 books in print.
Thousands of readers have already fallen in love with Ann Voskamp’s One Thousand Gifts, and this Christmas, Ann will help readers celebrate the lineage and the majesty of God’s greatest gift—Jesus Christ. In what has already become a holiday classic, Voskamp reaches back into the pages of the Old Testament to explore the lineage of Jesus via the advent tradition of “The Jesse Tree.”
Beginning with Jesse, the father of David, The Greatest Gift retraces the epic pageantry of mankind, from Adam to the Messiah, with each day’s reading pointing to the coming promise of Christ.
This advent devotional includes:
- Daily reflections from Ann in her signature poetic prose
- Daily Scripture readings
- Journaling and life application prompts
- Inspirational quotes
Ann Voskamp
Ann Voskamp is the wife of a farmer, mama to seven, and the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Broken Way, The Greatest Gift, Unwrapping the Greatest Gift, and the sixty-week New York Times bestseller One Thousand Gifts: A Dare to Live Fully Right Where You Are, which has sold more than 1.5 million copies and has been translated into more than twenty languages. Named by Christianity Today as one of fifty women most shaping culture and the church today, Ann knows unspoken broken, big country skies, and an intimacy with God that touches tender places. Cofounder of ShowUpNow.com, Ann is a passionate advocate for the marginalized and oppressed around the globe, partnering with Mercy House Global, Compassion International, and artisans around the world through her fair trade community, Grace Crafted Home. She and her husband took a leap of faith to restore a 125-year-old stone church into The Village Table—a place where everyone has a seat and belongs. Join the journey at www.annvoskamp.com or instagram/annvoskamp.
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Reviews for The Greatest Gift
11 ratings4 reviews
What our readers think
Readers find this title honest, deep, and filled with grace. It offers deeply insightful and relevant content with beautiful prose. Many readers appreciate it as an advent book to repeat every year. Overall, the book is loved and appreciated by readers.
- Rating: 4 out of 5 stars4/5The Greatest Gift: Unwrapping the full love story of Christmas by Ann VoscampQuotes from bible are connected to regular questions like what do you want for Christmas.Traces the link down through generations of what the greatest gift is.Book has devotional stories beginning with Dec 1 going all the way through Dec 25. Reminds me of the advent calendar we'd hang up on the back of the door and put an ornament on the tree each year when the kids were young.Love the easy ways you and the whole family can participate in the things that are being described.I received this book from National Library Service for my BARD (Braille Audio Reading Device).
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5What I loved about this book is that it was honest and deep and filled with grace. It pulled of the facade of Christmas so you could see what it really is. I'd read it again.
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Deeply insightful, relevant, beautiful prose; an advent book to repeat every year!
- Rating: 5 out of 5 stars5/5Love this so much Ann. Thank you for being obedient in writing it.
Book preview
The Greatest Gift - Ann Voskamp
Jesse Tree Invitation and Instructions
snowflakeSo. It’s late November, and you’ll need your Jesse Tree to wait for Jesus’ coming. To come to the Christmas tree through the family tree of Christ.
Your Jesse Tree may take on a number of wondrous forms. A silhouette of a tree may be sewn or painted, cut out of felt, or quilted. It may be hung from the fridge, a wall, a door, a window.
Or you may use a small evergreen tree in an urn, a cluster of red dogwood branches in a vase, or a pot of hemlock, pine, spruce, sticks, or holly.
The ornaments can be downloaded from www.thegreatestchristmas.com (using the code JESSE) and then printed out to hang on any tree of your imagining or envisioning. Just whatever you do . . .
Anticipate Christ . . . and Celebrate Christmas, His Coming
All this Jesse Tree making? It’s a bit like making your own family tree—a family tree with its arching branches of grandfathers and grandmothers, its sheltering leaves of aunts and uncles. To make a Jesse Tree is to trace the family line and heritage of your own forever family—the family of God.
A stump sprouting a new shootOut of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot.
ISAIAH 11:1
December 1: It Is Advent: ComeToday’s ReadingOut of the stump of David’s family will grow a shoot—
yes, a new Branch bearing fruit from the old root.
And the Spirit of the L
ORD
will rest on him—
the Spirit of wisdom and understanding,
the Spirit of counsel and might,
the Spirit of knowledge and the fear of the L
ORD
. . . .
In that day the heir to David’s throne
will be a banner of salvation to all the world.
The nations will rally to him,
and the land where he lives will be a glorious place.
ISAIAH 11:1-2, 10
The mattering part is never what isn’t.
The mattering part is never the chopped-off stump.
It isn’t what dream has been cut down, what hope has been cut off, what part of the heart has been cut out.
The tender mattering part is—you have a Tree.
Out of the last and forgotten son of Jesse comes forth one tender branch that will grow into a crown of thorns . . . a rugged cross . . . your ladder back to God. Jesus will go to impossible lengths to rescue you.
Out of the stump of that fallen tree, watered with the living waters that flow from the depths of His grace, a twig sprouts. That twig will be the scepter that defeats your sin . . . and lets you grow again.
Out of that stump and the sheared impossible there springs a singular shoot—tender and vulnerable.
There, here, in the midst of the inconceivable, the loud claims, the hard sells, the big spectacles, Christ comes small, the micro- macro-miracle who comes in the whisper and says, Seek Me. Just where you are, look for the small glimpses of God-glory breaking in, breaking out, sprouting, shooting, unfurling, bearing fruit, making a Kingdom, remaking the world. Slow and still. And seek the shoot that bears witness to God—the hardly noticed child, the hymn hummed over the sink, the unassuming woman bent at the register, the dog-eared Word of God beckoning from the shelf.
Gaze on shoots of glory to grow deep roots in God.
The theology of the Tree, of the Cross, always seeks the presence of God in the belittled gifts of the world.
The small Babe of Bethlehem, the dismissed Son of God, the stripped and beaten Messiah hanging exposed on the Tree—He begs us to spend the attention of Advent on the little, the least, the lonely, the lost.
Because in the rush, in the hurry, in our addiction to speed—it might just be a bit like stepping on the shoot that sprouts from the stump.
Advent, it is made of the moments.
This slow unfurling of grace.
Unwrapping More of His Love in the WorldPlant wheat or grass seeds for every act of love and kindness you do today. Continue planting seeds for kindnesses throughout the Jesse Tree journey. Keep watering the sprouts until Christmas Eve. You’re growing straw for the manger of the coming King! Love and new life are coming!
beginning of calloutIn the silence of a midwinter dusk, there is far off in the deeps of it somewhere a sound so faint that for all you can tell it may be only the sound of the silence itself. You hold your breath to listen. You walk up the steps to the front door. The empty windows at either side of it tell you nothing, or almost nothing. For a second you catch a whiff in the air of some fragrance that reminds you of a place you’ve never been and a time you have no words for. You are aware of the beating of your heart. The extraordinary thing that is about to happen is matched only by the extraordinary moment just before it happens. Advent is the name of that moment.
FREDERICK BUECHNER
A Moment for ReflectionIn what ways do you feel like a lifeless stump, longing for a tender shoot of hope?
What are you waiting for, yearning for this season?
Where can you see new life coming in what you may have considered dead?
Adam and Eve among animalsSo God created human beings in his own image.
GENESIS 1:27
December 2: Life Begins as a Love StoryToday’s ReadingIn the beginning God created the heavens and the earth. The earth was formless and empty, and darkness covered the deep waters. And the Spirit of God was hovering over the surface of the waters.
Then God said, Let there be light,
and there was light. And God saw that the light was good. Then he separated the light from the darkness. God called the light day
and the darkness night.
. . .
God said, Let us make human beings in our image, to be like us. They will reign over the fish in the sea, the birds in the sky, the livestock, all the wild animals on the earth, and the small animals that scurry along the ground.
So God created human beings in his own image.
In the image of God he created them;
male and female he created them.
GENESIS 1:1-5, 26-27
This Christmas story—it begins in the beginning, this love story that’s been coming for you since the beginning.
It begins with the always coming of Christ.
Christ, who is there in the beginning, the voice calling out of darkness, an echo in cosmic emptiness, speaks it by the commanding word of His mouth: Let there be