Gift Guides are BACK! We know how difficult it can be to find that perfect gift—and how rewarding it is when you find it! We decided to help you out a bit by compiling a list of unique gift ideas, mostly artisan and from small shops. We hope it offers you some inspiration this season, and maybe even makes checking things off your list a bit easier. Happy gifting!

And it is the Prince of Peace, who is at once Mighty God and Everlasting Father and Wonderful Counselor, for whom we wait. And when we consider the final Kingdom, I believe what we are experiencing now is a mere picture of the entirety of restored creation filled with His perfect peace. The entire Kingdom will be completeness (in number), safe and sound, healthy and prosperous, tranquil and content, and deep friendship will abound between men as well as between God and man.

God stepped in time and time again to redeem His people, to bring them back to himself. Now, on this side of history, we look back with hearts overflowing with gratefulness for the time when God stepped in once again to redeem His people—this time through His Son, the exact imprint of the nature of God—once for all. In our ultimate redemption though the incarnation and sacrifice the Son, we see the image of the invisible God—our Everlasting Father. 

We know how difficult it can be to find that perfect gift—and how rewarding it is when you find it! We decided to help you out a bit by compiling a list of unique gift ideas, mostly artisan and from small shops. We hope it offers you some inspiration this season, and maybe even makes checking things off your list a bit easier. Happy gifting!

It’s a picture of God as warrior, defender, champion. Mighty in battle. It brings to my mind the image of the God of Armies, named over and over in the narratives of the kings and the prophets. He is protector, avenger, MIGHTY.

Jesus does all of these things but infinitely more. He didn’t live a perfect life to show us how it’s done so we could follow Him in attempting this same perfection. He came and lived a perfect life for us because we simply cannot… With every stripped-down, vulnerable encounter with our Wonderful Counselor (Isaiah 9:6) we are changed forever for His glory. It doesn’t get more wonderful than that.

How often have I ascribed more honor and glory and power to the gift rather than the Giver? How often have I distorted the pleasure of a gift from the hand of my Father into something selfish, something all about me? How often have I gotten caught up in the enjoyment of—then disappointed by—a thing that can never satisfy, rather than remembering that all good gifts point me to the only One who can fully satisfy?