The Advent of Love

A meditation for December 2003

I wrote this meditation, another paraphrase of First Cointhians 13, for a Japanese student who became a Christian while studying in the U.S. She was confused, by all she saw happening in our American culture which we call “celebrating Christmas.”

The love of God finds its most profound and life-giving expression in the Christ event. The theological word for it is “incarnation,” the coming into our flesh and into human history of Jesus Christ, son of God, born of the virgin Mary.

Such love is a mystery beyond our understanding and, certainly, beyond our deserving. This arrival of God in the man Jesus is at the heart of the Advent season, a season we celebrate as a people of faith. It is the season with which the Christian year begins. Those of us with roots in Western
Christianity even mark the passage of the centuries as B.C., (Before Christ), or A.D., (Anno Domini - in the year of the Lord).

Our celebration of Christmas as the birthday of Jesus has taken on so much secular and commercial baggage, it is easy to forget the One whose coming reveals the face of God. Let’s not ever forget that with this gift of love we come face to face with the fullness of God’s grace.

God bless us everyone!

The Advent of Love

Set your feet on higher ground this year and I will show you the way to Bethlehem.

If I speak with the earthy language of Luke and also sing with the heavenly hosts, but share the Christmas story again without making it a love story, it becomes a noisy song and a tinseled symbol.

And if I have powers of imagination and pretend to understand the mystery of incarnation and know my theology cold; and if I have faith that's been to the mountain, but let that theology remain outside the stable; and if I take a wiseman's journey without love, I stay in the darkness.

If I offer rare and precious gifts in this season, and if I expend all my energy in pageants and parties, but make these offerings in order that others may love me, I gain nothing of the spirit of Christmas.

Love in this season is patient with those who think Christmas will never get here, and love keeps words kind in spite of the frantic pace which overtakes us. Love in our celebration rules out gift exchanges that are self-serving; questions valuing persons by the price of their gifts; avoids rudeness in the shopping place.

Love in December days is not irritated by the trite and the trivial nor resentful of demands others make of us. It does not dwell on the wrongs in the world, but finds joy in the truth of God's gift.

Love in Advent bears the burden of history unfolding; believes in the reality of the Word made flesh; hopes for good will and enduring peace among all.

God's love is eternal. But as for imagination and our inspirations, they will reach their limits; as for the witness of the shepherds and the angelic chorus, it will cease to echo; as for certainty about what God is doing in the world, even that will elude us.

For we know only part of the gospel truth, and we envision only part of the Bethlehem scene; but when Christ is born in us, the partial will fade away.

When I came to Christmas as a child, I talked to Santa like a child; I made a wish list like an adolescent; I figured out giving and getting like a greedy kid. When I matured in my being, I put an end to such childish ways.

For now we see ourselves in the Christmas picture still dimly aware of its glory, but we are coming face to face with the One who is born to be our Savior.

Now I touch the edge of the future that is coming to me - the advent that will bring the fullness of God.

And now abiding in the fields where we are shepherded are faith that brings us to our knees at the manger, hope that follows a star, and love that comes to us as we are.

These three, but the greatest of these is God's gift of love.

Celebrate love

(Permission is given to reproduce, with source acknowledged.)

From Love’s Letters: A Poetic Book of Confessions by George Gunn
(Library Lane Press / Copyright 2001)