Christmas Love

  
Read John 3:16

It’s all about love.

When each of my children was born, I remember looking down as they slept peacefully in their mother’s arms and my heart was filled with love. Love for this frail, fragile little one entrusted to our care. Love was the emotion. Of course that love required practical expression. Time, energy, money and more needed investing in this tiny life! But as every parents knows, in the end it’s all about love.

When God sent his Son that first Christmas, no doubt Mary and Joseph felt a similar love. We know this worked itself out in practical care (Lk 2:7) and committed devotion (Lk 2:48). They loved their baby.

But what’s easily missed is that the love that caused baby Jesus to be born is a love like no other. This isn’t just the passionate, playful love of a wife and husband that bring most babies into the world. This is the deep, committed, forgiving and gracious love of the Great Father, lavished on a broken world! Love is the emotion. Love is the motive. Love is the reason. It’s all about love.

John’s gospel describes it like this: ‘God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son’ (Jn 3:16).

The hymn-writer Christina Rosetti put it like this: ‘Love came down at Christmas, love all lovely, love divine.’

This is Jesus Christ. The God-child. The love of the Father. All wrapped up in strips of cloth and lying in a manger.

We love babies, but we don’t normally worship them. But we do today. We do this baby. Because this baby is the embodiment of love. The love of God. The greatest love in the whole world.

So celebrate the love. Share the love. Care in love. Give in love. 

It’s all about love.

Respond

ACTION: Go to church on this Christmas Day and celebrate God’s love in sending Jesus. And share much love today. Even if someone says something out of order today, or something happens that frustrates you today, chose right now to love. To love the person in front of you. In thought, word and action.

PRAY: Pray that today the Holy Spirit would fill you with the same love that sent Jesus into the world. Pray for the people you’re going to meet today. Pray that they would experience the love of God through you today. And pray that the world would know the love that comes through Jesus Christ our Lord.