Readings for Advent - Love

Christmas is a season of love.

We love candy canes. We love Christmas lights strung around trees and across rooftops. We love the smell of freshly cut wreaths and the sound of children singing "Silent Night". We love Peppermint Mochas with whipped cream and Hallmark movies with sappy endings. We love tearing open neatly wrapped boxes, and even more we love giving the perfect gift.

Christmas is a season of love, but one love stands out above all of the rest. Over 2000 years ago, people in a small inn in Bethlehem pulled their blankets up to their chins and settled in for the night. Just a few feet away, behind the inn, God was blessing mankind with the most perfect gift of all.

God’s gift of Himself that night in Bethlehem was the outpouring of a love that extended back before Adam took his first breath.  God’s love for all people has never wavered. Jesus’ arrival to earth was an emphatic declaration of that love. John, one of the disciples closest to Jesus said it this way, “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.”1

I pray that this Christmas you will be reminded of how deeply you are loved by God. Also, I hope you will take time to tell those you love how much they mean to you. 

Picture Courtesy: "Gift-wraping" by BlairSnow - http://www.giftideasformen.com. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Wikimedia Commons - https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Gift-wraping.jpg#/media/File:Gift-wraping.jpg

1 - 1 John 4: 8-10 (The Message)