Advent Week 4: Love
FROM BETH STEELE, A PAX TL1 & SF CERTIFICATE GRADUATE
This post is part of our four-part Advent series in 2022 on the themes of Hope, Peace, Joy & Love moving through the first 2 chapters of the Gospel of Luke. One post will be released each week through the season of Advent. We started this tradition last year & love hearing from a variety of voices in this season leading to Christmas! This 4th & final reflection is focusing on love & Luke 2:1-20.
Only a week to go until we celebrate the birth of Jesus. Each year we are swamped with siren calls to spend, lovely images that lure us to expectations of a beautiful Christmas surrounded by well-fed, manicured & polished friends & family who smile & sing & dance & give us amazing gifts. Advent asks us to put that vision aside to recognize the essence of God as revealed in a human child. For me this year, a year that has held grief as well as growth, God’s essence is revealed in Love. Love—the four letter word that means nothing & everything.
In January of this year, my husband died unexpectedly of COVID. I found myself in a strange new world & a new role of “widow”. As I experienced the loss of a primary source of human love in my life for 46 years, friends & family came around me offering love that I had rarely experienced.
God met me as I moved deeper into prayer & opportunities to serve & be served emerged. It caused me to reflect on what it means to love & be loved by God, how it is made real in our daily lives—the Word made flesh & living among us & in us.
Is this love an emotion—a feeling of loving & being loved, feelings that we know from our human relationships? Is it a response of service, a recognition of gifts given & a desire to give. Is it a connection with others & with God that deepens both as we draw near to the people in our lives & as we spend time with the Creator? Is it a command—love the Lord your God & love others as yourself? Is it the most audacious & unbelievable mystery in the world—to be loved & known by the Creator of the Universe—one among many but one seen & recognized, God with us? Yes, Yes, & Yes!!!
Although the gospel account Luke 2 never mentions the word “love”, I was drawn to these images of love in the story:
The Holy Spirit producing a human child in Mary’s womb, who was somehow also God, coming to live with real human people in our very own world. This was love enfleshed in a beautiful child & the ultimate gift to us.
The recognition by God that the coming of Christ to earth would be accompanied by great fear on the part of the humans involved. Mary, Joseph, & the shepherds were all afraid & that fear was addressed & comfort was provided. “Fear not”, they were told. This was love that provided safety & encouragement.
We don’t hear too much about the human support that Mary & Joseph received but we do know that shelter was provided when the inn was full & God was present as both father & child. I am sure that women in the town aided this young mother during her laboring. This was love--the presence of God & the provision of God.
We know that Jesus was born into a family, into a village, into a spiritual community all providing love & support as he grew. This is the love Jesus learned from a young age, “ You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, mind & strength & you shall love your neighbor as yourself.”
The shepherds, & later the wise men, who visited the child recognized the importance of Jesus’ birth & they responded with worship & gifts. This is love expressed in worship but also through the giving of gifts to one another.
As I searched these events for examples of God’s love at work in these very human lives, I saw the events we celebrate at Christmas go beyond colorful pictures from a long-loved story to become love-infused, clear evidence of the living God who is still as active & alive in our daily lives as God was active in the Nativity. This year my Advent practice is answering this question each day: “Today, in this life I am living, where is Love?”
Where is love in your life? What does it look like? In what hidden places do you find God’s love? What circumstances blind you to recognizing the love of God in your life? What circumstances reveal the reality of God’s love bursting into your everyday life?