Accept the Gift
2025 First Presidency’s Christmas Devotional
Sunday, December 7, 2025
At Christmas time, our minds naturally turn to thoughts of home—our earthly homes and our heavenly home. However, one of my most memorable Christmases came the first time I ever spent Christmas away from home.
I was a relatively new full-time missionary in Brazil, still getting used to an unfamiliar culture and language. One day, as my companion and I were walking through a humble favela, we heard someone call out to us: “Do you teach about Jesus?”
We turned and saw a woman who invited us into her small, dirt-floor home. We met her aged mother and her seven children, who all somehow lived together in that tiny space. We started teaching them the restored gospel of Jesus Christ, and they were eager to learn.
As Christmastime approached, the family invited us to have Christmas dinner in their home. I admit that I wasn’t excited about their invitation. I had trouble imagining what kind of Christmas dinner this poor family could possibly offer. They didn’t even have a table to sit at! In my immature mind, I thought about the more well-to-do families in the ward and wondered if we should hold out for a better offer from one of them.
Fortunately, my senior companion was wiser than I was, and he quickly accepted the invitation. On Christmas day, we were welcomed into this family’s humble home.
I was not prepared for what I saw.
In the middle of the room was a table with heaping plates of rice, beans, meat, and potatoes, and a tall bottle of soda. And there were only two chairs—one for me, and one for my companion.
I was speechless and overcome with emotion. They had prepared this Christmas dinner just for us. It must have been a great sacrifice for them. And yet, as I sat at the table and looked at the children, sitting against the wall, watching us eat, I saw smiles on their faces. Making a sacrifice for us—strangers from another country—had brought them genuine joy. They had given us a beautiful gift, and at first, I had been hesitant to accept it.
That Christmas changed my life forever. Even though many years have passed, I think about it often. The memory of that family’s joyful sacrifice turns my thoughts to the sacrifice of Jesus Christ, His sacred gift of redemption and healing. After all, His gift is the reason we celebrate Christmas.
I think of our Heavenly Father’s question: “Whom shall I send?” and the Son’s courageous response, “Here am I, send me.”
I think of Jesus’s humble birth and humble life—His willingness to “come down from heaven among the children of men, and … dwell in a tabernacle of clay.”
I think of His suffering in Gethsemane, where He bore “our griefs,” “carried our sorrows,” and took upon Himself our sins.
“I think of his hands pierced and bleeding to pay [our] debt!”
I think of His Resurrection, His glorious victory over death.
And then I ask myself, “Am I accepting the gift He so joyfully offers?” I have pondered that question many times since that Christmas dinner in Brazil.
Years later, I was back in Brazil, this time serving with my wife as mission leaders. I learned so much from each missionary who served with us. I admire their eager and anxious desires to give the Lord an acceptable offering.
I remember, in particular, a conversation I had with a dear sister as she was concluding her mission. She confided in me that she was afraid to go home. She was worried that she would look back on her mission with regret, thinking about the ways she could have served better, worried that she could have done more. As I tried to reassure this wonderful missionary, we talked about a different way to look at her mission—and her life. Our devotion to Jesus Christ is not like a school project that we turn in, hoping for a perfect score. Jesus Christ is the only perfect person, and His is the only perfect life. As we seek to improve, we turn to Him, and it’s not in a spirit of “I did it!” or “I earned it!” or “I arrived!” but rather “I accept.”
Of course, we want to live in a way that’s acceptable to the Lord. We naturally hope that He accepts our offering. But just as important—or perhaps more so—is the question “Do I accept His?”
I don’t think accepting the Savior’s gift can be done passively or casually. To me, the word accept implies a conscious choice and intentional action. Just as His sacrifice for us was voluntary, He wants us to accept it voluntarily. Like any good gift giver, the Lord is sensitive not just to our needs but also to our desires. As Alma taught, “He granteth unto men [and women] according to their desire.”
When Jesus went to the pool of Bethesda and saw a man who had been unable to walk for 38 years, He asked the man if he wanted to be healed. It seems like an obvious question, but the Healer does not heal us against our will. The miracle came only after the man expressed his desire.
What are your desires? What do you really want to experience and accomplish in this life—today, tomorrow, and eternally? Do you need comfort? Relief? Are you hoping to find peace again? Strength from the Lord? Do you want to be healed? Forgiven? Redeemed? Do you really want to become more and more like Jesus Christ—to live with Him and with our heavenly parents forever?
If so, then accept the gift Jesus Christ is offering you.
“For what doth it profit a man if a gift is bestowed upon him, and he receive [or accept] not the gift? … He rejoices not in that which is given unto him, neither rejoices in him who is the giver of the gift.”
God will not force His way into our lives or impose His gift upon us. Instead, He lets us choose to accept it. “Turn unto me,” He says, and then you will discover that not only has He already turned to you, but His arms of mercy are always extended.
To help explain what it means to turn to the Lord, I’d like to share something I learned from my granddaughter Blakely when she was just two years old.
Every year at Christmastime, Blakely and the rest of the grandchildren come to our home to share in one of our favorite Christmas traditions: enjoying beautiful Christmas crèches. My wife and I have a collection of crèches from all over the world, and every Christmas we set them up around the house for the grandchildren to find.
Here’s a picture of one of our crèches. As you can see, the baby Jesus is in the middle, and the other figures—Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, the Wise Men, and so on—are arranged in a line so they can all be seen. That seems like a pretty standard way to set up a Christmas crèche.
One year, I noticed something odd about our crèches. Someone had gone throughout the house and rearranged them. Every figure of every crèche had been turned in a circle to face the baby Jesus. I later discovered that it was Blakely who had made this brilliant modification to our Christmas decorations.
With this simple act, Blakely taught me a profound lesson: It isn’t enough just to be in the same general area as the Savior. It’s not enough to be slightly tilted in His direction, or next to someone who is close to Him. To fully accept Christ’s gift, we each need to fully turn toward Him.
So how do we do it? What does it look like to fully turn toward the Savior? How do we show that we accept His gift of redemption and healing?
I believe the answer is found in this counsel from President Russell M. Nelson: we need to “discover the joy of daily repentance.”
It really is that simple. We accept the Savior’s gift by repenting, by turning to Him. He offered His life so that we could change, improve, be healed, and be redeemed. So we accept that offer by changing, improving, and accepting His healing power into our lives.
And we don’t just do it once. We do it every single day, because we need it every single day. Accepting the Savior’s gift is a lifelong commitment. His is truly the gift that keeps on giving as we keep on accepting by turning to Him.
Sometimes we speak of keeping the spirit of Christmas with us throughout the year. I know children who often wish that every day could be Christmas. In truth, we can—and we should—celebrate Christmas each day by turning to the Savior and gratefully accepting His gift. As we embrace the joy of daily repentance, we will discover that the blessings of Christmas and the miracle of His gift can be ours continually.
Dear brothers and sisters, I testify that Jesus Christ, the Son of God, willingly and lovingly and joyfully gave His life as a precious gift so that you and I can be healed, redeemed, and exalted. I pray that we will each fully turn to Jesus Christ and accept His gift—this Christmas, and every day of our lives. In the name of Jesus Christ, amen.