ADVENT WEEK 4: LOVE

ADVENT WEEK 4: Love

Dearly Beloved, 

We fell out of love.
Have you heard anyone use that phrase before? 

It's a puzzling phrase when you think about it. It seems to suggest that love is some sort of thing one helplessly falls into (or is tricked into?), and thus, can subsequently also fall out of seemingly outside of their control. 

The more one matures in love the more they realize that love is not a feeling you fall into or succumb to. At the end of the day, mature love always involves choice. 

We love love. 
We love it when love is easy and fun. 

But life isn't always easy and fun. And people aren't always easy and fun.  And let's face it, you (and I!) aren't always easy and fun to love. 

What the world desperately needs is love. Where in the world do we find the capacity and capability to love when it's not easy and fun? 

The apostle John tells us. 

"We love because He first loved us." 
1 John 4.19 

Christmas is one of the greatest indications of God's love! When we (humanity) were at our weakest and worst --when we were not easy and fun to love-- God came close. He came humbly, vulnerably, and He came sacrificially. He came as a listener, one of the most powerful expressions of loving well. (recall this from our EHS Series? Listen Here),

God could have withdrawn. God could have ignored us. God could have cut the relationship off. Instead, God moved toward us. As close as He could get - with flesh on!

This Christmas, when love is easy and fun, I hope you delight in it! But if this Christmas includes some challenging moments and fractured relationships, you're not alone. In fact, you have Divine company. God loved (and loves) you at your worst. May this same love inspire the strength and resolve needed to choose to love well. 

Pastor Mike