Our language does not do justice to the word LOVE.
I often say “I love something”, but depending on what I’m speaking of that love can mean many different things.
By now, if you follow these posts (and thank you for reading them!), you’ll know I love the season of Advent. Because it draws me into the deeper longings of the heart, and the waiting for the coming…Advent means Coming. It also means the “Arrival”, or the “Appearance”.
Because Christmas comes, as it came that first Christmas long ago….LOVE came down, the fulfillment of a promise, the answer to the longings of the people’s cry for a Messiah, a Saviour.
And yes, we know the story well, and yet we long for a world that isn’t broken, where people truly LOVE one another. We are comforted by the miracle of this precious baby, whom we find out is the promised Messiah, the great fulfillment of years of longing and waiting. And before He left this earth for heaven, He gives us this wonderful promise that He will come again. With that coming will come a world without pain, without sorrow, without war, without trouble. I rather long for that.
Just as that first Christmas, we cannot fully grasp what that all means. There is mystery to it. And yet I know that I can trust in a God who loves me, who has walked with me for many years, I can testify that I have experienced this love in so many amazing ways.
I heard an interesting story this week that relates to Solstice. This is the darkest time of the year, in our hemisphere, where we long for light, we wait for that turning, for the days to stretch.
I will admit to you right now I didn’t research this well, but my understanding is that those who chose the date of Christmas to celebrate the birth of Jesus, saw symbolism in choosing a day, three days after the darkest night. It reflects the Easter story of the earth dark as Jesus dies and his followers mourned… and then the resurrection three days later! This is the promised fulfilled!
However the story goes, what is true is that Christmas is all about Light in the very darkest of times. It gives us Hope, it promises Peace, and fills us with Joy. And truly, it is all about Love, that God should choose to put on human flesh and be with us. That is the miracle of Emmanuel, which means God with us.
That is a gift of LOVE that can’t be put into words.
I was looking for LOVE verses this week, and you will find a couple of them embedded in this week’s Advent drawing, the last one of this series.
For God so Loved the world… found in John 3:16, my favourite verse as a child.
And one of my favourite chapters, the last part of Romans 8, where we learn that nothing can separate us from the LOVE of God.
And Jeremiah writes… “I have loved you with an everlasting love!”
If nothing else this Advent season, I want to sit with that thought… I am truly loved by God. Not for what I do, or what I’ve accomplished, or my correct theology, or how people see me. None of that…
No, I’m loved by the One who created me, who loves me just as I am.
with love, and a blessed Christmas to all,
Grace
oh, an extra little tidbit, there is an excellent blog by this lady who takes the LOVE chapter (1 Corinthians 13) and translates it into a Christmas meditation. Check it out here! Posted tonight by a friend, and I thought it was great:
https://sharonjaynes.com/1-corinthians-13-christmas-style/
