This is part of the series The Gifts Of The Holidays: Celebrating Thanksgiving And Christmas. Read more from the series!
Perhaps one of the most significant gifts of Christmas is the gift of love.
God is love. John 4:8-12 give us a great explanation of love:
Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.
Love came into our world from Heaven.
Love entered humanity as a baby.
Love became one of us that night in Bethlehem.
Love saved us from ourselves, from our sin.
We most often think of love at weddings, or on Valentine’s Day.
But perhaps we need to take a deeper look at the concept of love.
Because of love, God entered this world as a messy, fussy baby, completely dependent upon others… others who would one day be completely dependent upon him for reconciliation.
Because of love, God chose to be born in a stable, with only Mary and Joseph, a few shepherds, and some livestock as witness… humble beginnings that would continue into a humble life and even more humbling death.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death – even death on a cross! (Philippians 2:5-8)
Because of love….
When was the last time you read 1 Corinthians 13? Take a look at how Paul describes love, how he describes God:
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears. When I was a child, I talked like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love.
Maybe instead of waiting until the next wedding we attend, we should read that more often.
Maybe we should read it to our families this Christmas.
Just a thought…
What do you do to remind yourself that not only does God love you, but that he is, in fact, love? Share your thoughts in the comments section below.