Love: The Third week of advent

"And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."-1 Corinthians 13:13

It was hard narrowing all 700 verses with love in it down to one. I chose this one, from the most favorite chapter to be read at weddings, 1 Corinthians 13 (which is known as the love chapter). I like this because it mentions 2 of the 4 advent candles. I think perhaps they should replace one of the other 2 with faith, or faith a 5th week of advent. Faith does prepare us for Christmas just as much as the others.

Love prepares our hearts for Christmas. To truly understand Christmas, we must understand love. First, we know God is love (1 John 4:8). Therefore, we can conclude everything God has done for His people is out of love. We know God loved His Son Jesus. He said at His Son's Baptism and Transfiguration. John 3:16 is the most famous Bible verse. The beginning of it tells us why the Lord gave us His Son. "For Go so loved the world..." We learn from the Bible that the greatest show of love is to give up his life for friends (John 15:13). That's why Jesus died on the cross. God the Father loved God the Son, but he also loved His people. That's why the Father and the Son allowed the Son of God to be crucified. As Richard J. Foster said in his book The Celebration of Discipline, "Love, not anger brought Jesus to the cross." The Son of Man died for us out of love.

Comparing the Christmas story to advent themes, I see love in Mary, the mother of Jesus. Just like our parents love us, their children, Mary loved her child, Jesus. She probably cared for it, wanting to make it comfortable, and not in pain or discomfort. She probably wanted to hold it and not let go. As she held it, she could only guess of how this little boy would be the messiah. Oh, if she only knew. I'm reminded of the song "Mary, did you know?" The songs talks about the baby growing up, performing miracles, and becoming Lord over all. But it doesn't mention anything about Christ's death. Did Mary know how He would die on this cruel earth? Did Gabriel tell her something like:

"On the night of the Passover, your son will be betrayed by one of his closest follwers and friends. He will lead a crowd, who just earlier that week was cheering and praising the enterance of your son into the capital. Most of the crowd will be chief priests and the teachers of the law, who are just jealous of his popularity, and his knowledge of how they aren't pure and perfect. Really, they feel threatened by him. He will be put on trial in front of 3 men. They will condemn him to death and will turn him over to the Gentiles to be mocked and flogged and crucified, arguably the worst execution method in all history. Furthermore, he will refuse any pain killers. The worst, you'll be there to witness every minute of the suffering of the child you will bear for the Lord."

Probably Gabriel told her nothing of that sort. If the angel did, Mary will have been an emotional basket case. She would have cried at the annunciation of Jesus's birth, the birth, when she lost him at the age of 12, when he decided to leave to begin his ministry at the age of 30. No mother wants to outlive her child, know how her child will die, nor wants her child to suffer through it. But although Mary would witness her son's violent death, if she only knew what was going to happen next: a victorious resurrection. Jesus knew everything that was going to happen, but still went through with it. Now that is love.

When we understand Christ's love, we reflect why we should love. Jesus told us in John 13:34&35, "A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another." We must love because we can be identified as followers of Jesus because we love. We should love year round, but when Christmas comes, we must really love. How do we do this? During Christmas, we usually show love by giving. But I think we've missed this. We only give to our family and friends. But's God's love is to everyone, not just our family and friends. Sometimes by giving love to others, especially in public, we can rob others of the feeling of the love of Christmas. I realized this as we watched Charlie Brown Christmas yet another year. He wasn't feeling Christmast because of the commericialism of Christmas. The love commericial Christmas tells of is receiving love through the Christmas cards and presents one gets from family friends. If our family and friends love us, they will give us things. Reverse is true, too. We believe if we truly love our friends and family, we must get them presents. We're giving, just like Jesus commanded, but I think we're missing the point. We should be giving for more than just "love" (which isn't even true love, it's the fuzzy feeling love). So how do we separate ourselves as Christians from the worldly Christmas? We got to get out of the cycle of giving out of fuzzy love, and we can do this by getting back to the true love of Christmas. We got to get together, talk this over, and realize our friendship won't change whether or not we get gifts or not. If it means no one giving or getting gifts, so be it. We also must be giving gifts to others beyond family and friends. These means presents for the poor, authority, strangers, unpopular, unliked and the hated enemies. People we wouldn't give to normally. They're the ones who feel the lack of love during Christmas. It's not only important that we give to them, but we must give equally to them as everyone else. Then not only will we be giving the true love of Christmas, we will be reaping it back to ourselves. We will be living the life of love Christ set an example for us to live.

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