Advent - Week 4 - Love
As I sat down to write today’s post, which emphasizes the final week of Advent, my eyes fell on a little spiritual prompt card lying on my desk on which was written this question:
Where do you find meaning?
The inquiry invites consideration, and I realize my one-word answer is encapsulated in the theme of this third week of Advent: LOVE.
In 1885, Christina Rossetti’s poem, “Love Came Down at Christmas” was published. The opening stanza says,
Love came down at Christmas,
Love all lovely, Love divine;
Love was born at Christmas,
Star and angels gave the sign.
God’s LOVE arrived in the person of a tiny baby whose birth was foretold hundreds of years before. The infant had been conceived by the Holy Spirit and was born to a young girl in a lowly manger, located in a village filled with prophetic significance.
As I write today about an event I’ve never doubted, I realize the mystery of the Incarnation story must be understood through the eyes of faith. To the one who processes it only with his or her logical left brain, it probably sounds like a fantastical fairy tale.
Rossetti’s inspiration may have come from this passage of Scripture found in 1 John 4:7-12. I appreciate the way Eugene Peterson paraphrases it in The Message:
My beloved friends, let us continue to love each other since love comes from God. Everyone who loves is born of God and experiences a relationship with God. The person who refuses to love doesn’t know the first thing about God, because God is love—so you can’t know him if you don’t love. This is how God showed his love for us: God sent his only Son into the world so we might live through him. This is the kind of love we are talking about—not that we once upon a time loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as a sacrifice to clear away our sins and the damage they’ve done to our relationship with God.
My dear, dear friends, if God loved us like this, we certainly ought to love each other. No one has seen God, ever. But if we love one another, God dwells deeply within us, and his love becomes complete in us—perfect love!
Advent Pray for Love
God of Perfect LOVE,
I confess I cannot logically comprehend the story of Christmas.
While difficult to comprehend, give me the grace to believe wholeheartedly the mystery of this amazing story of how LOVE entered a broken world.
I believe:
God, You are LOVE, and You cannot NOT LOVE.
Your LOVE is kind, patient, good, and faithful.
Your LOVE that lives in me produces joy, peace, and self-control. (See Galatians 5:22-23)
Emmanuel, you who were born a baby, grew as a child, worked as a man, taught as Wisdom, illustrated LOVE in action, and died as Redeemer, thank you for showing us how to LOVE.
Perfect LOVE, thank you for coming down at Christmas and allowing us to catch a glimpse of that “O, Holy Night” when you slept “Away in a Manger.”
God, the LOVE I need from You now is____________________________________:
(fill in the blank)
Amen
May your hearts and homes be filled with the Divine LOVE of Christmas this week,
