This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. –1 John 4:10
This third week of our Advent devotional journey focuses on the theme of love, and rightly so. This is the season of coins dropped in Salvation Army kettles representing love for those we may never meet, of carols sung on porch steps representing love for neighbors, of gifts and cards representing our love for our most intimate circle of friends and family. Somehow the whole world seems to take a break from the rat race of competition and aggression. Even that slow driver in the fast lane doesn’t bother us as much during December.
Why is this so? What happens to us at Christmas that our best selves emerge shining in the gleam of mid-winter light, like year-long buried treasures unearthed?
Here is the secret to that loving Christmas spirit, in my opinion. At Christmas we see God’s great initiative toward us: loving us before we even considered loving Him, thinking of us before we ever thought of Him, moving toward us to meet us all the way to where we are, not waiting to meet us half-way. This is God’s great Christmas gift to humanity. Just as God created us in the first place by His own initiative, God re-created us by sending Jesus to earth at Christmas, making a path of reconciliation possible through the sacrifice of Christ. Or as our text for today puts it, “This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son…”
Our loving thoughts and actions, especially this time of year, are simply reflections of God’s first love for us, like the moon reflecting the light of the sun. When employers treat employees well, they in turn treat customers well. When parents love their children, they are more likely to become loving adults themselves. It all starts with someone making the first loving move to get the circle going, and that is precisely what God did at Christmas. We feel and act in loving ways not to get God to love us more, but because He already loves us more than we could ever ask or deserve or understand. And so loving others comes more easily when we are awash in God’s first love for us. How could we do otherwise?
Prayer: O Lord, may Your first love for me so overwhelm me that I am forever changed. May it soak so deeply into my soul that I become more loving toward You, and toward all those I meet along the way. May Your grace, so freely extended to me, cause me to become more gracious as I pass it along to others you love just as much as me. Thank You for Your love, this most precious of all gifts this Advent! Amen.
-Pastor Allen Walworth
