LOVE: God's Finest Gift

By Bob Henderson

On this Christmas Eve, I hope you’ll join me in pausing to appreciate the blessings of the year past. This year, in particular, has been rich for our family. Children have been home for holidays, friendships have been borne and renewed, work has been rewarding and good health in full supply. We’re grateful to our bones.

One particular blessing this year was the opportunity to take a sabbatical. For ten weeks in the summer, my schedule was open to do as I pleased, and I certainly tried to make the most of it. I enjoyed a week of solitude while hiking and biking in the high desert country of Utah. I hibernated in a log cabin in North Carolina and luxuriated in fine literature. I renewed old friendships across the south and even fulfilled a life-long dream of hiking the Dolomites while staying in old farmhouses (called refugios) and meeting other hikers from across the globe. Each experience exceeded every hope and expectation.

So, when I was asked, upon return, to name my single favorite experience on sabbatical, I paused to scan all my memories and was surprised by tears welling up in my eyes when I realized my answer. “Sharing dinner with my whole family,” I said. “One night I sat down with Suzanne, our three children, as well as my mother, and we shared fine food and great laughter for nearly two hours. It was lovely, sacred, nothing less than God’s finest gift.” I loved every minute of it.

Of all the things Christmas is about -- and it is about a lot, gifts, memories, rituals, faith -- more than anything it’s about love. Love born into our midst. Love shared with dear ones. Love expressed to new family members. Love recalled for family members no longer with us. It’s about love, God’s love born into the world that equips us to love fearlessly, love with abandon.

German theologian Helmut Thielicke put it beautifully. "All loving,” he said, “is ultimately thanksgiving for the fact that we ourselves have been loved.” (The Waiting Father, p.168)

The whole foundation of Christmas -- God’s son being born into the world -- reminds us that we are loved. The birth of the baby, when we understand it as a gift that conveys God’s unconditional love, says to you and me -- you matter, you have value, your life is worth my love.

LOVE: An Unlikely Friend

Read: Ephesians 4:1-3

By Bill Keith

Miss Bess was the first non-family member to really love me. From my earliest memories, she and her husband, a retired Presbyterian minister, sat on the pew behind our family every Sunday at Second Church in Concord. At 77, she was an unlikely friend to a new baby boy but for nearly 13 years she loved me as if I were her own. During the recent rainstorms, I was cleaning out old papers at home and stumbled upon this note in her scrawled handwriting.  

"My dear little Bill, I want you to use this to help get your education to do some kind of church work. You are very dear to me. I think you sing so well and can be a leader to help others and be a good help to so many. God bless and keep you in his love and care. Your friend with love, Miss Bess"

I was instantly transported to the day, nearly fifty years ago, when Miss Bess gave me this note along with some money that seemed like a fortune to a 10-year-old boy. She later told my dad that she had saved a little every week for me.

Miss Bess showed what it means when we affirm the baptismal question: "Do we the people of the church promise to tell this child the good news of the gospel, to help them know all Christ commands, and by our fellowship strengthen their family ties with the household of God?"

LOVE: Accepting God's Favor

Read: Luke 1:39-45 and Revelation 22:1-5

By Blaine Sanders

It was the best prenatal class of all time. Mary, pregnant with Jesus, went to visit Elizabeth, pregnant with John the Baptist. When Elizabeth heard Mary enter her house, her baby leaped in her womb, and she was filled with the Holy Spirit. Pregnancy is an exciting time, but this was something incredible. But then, as part of her exclamation, Elizabeth asked, "Why am I so favored, that the mother of my Lord should come to me?"

It is tempting during Advent for us to get hung up on "why" questions about God’s love. Why did God carry out His plan through humble, ordinary people like Mary and Elizabeth? Why did God choose to work through the Jews, many of whom rejected Him and a segment of whom conspired to put Him to death? Why did God invite each of us to join His unlikely family? In other words, why are we so favored?

I suppose people a lot smarter than me can offer answers to these questions, and that could make for stimulating discussions. But as we approach Christmas, does it really matter why God chose us? Isn’t the wonderful news that He did choose us? For no rationale reason, certainly not our innate goodness, God decided to send His Son so that we might live in His kingdom, both on earth and eventually in heaven. Despite her question, Elizabeth got it. She didn’t get hung up on why she was so favored. She quickly started telling Mary about her baby leaping in her womb and praising Mary for Mary’s faith. May we have that same faith that allows us to simply live in God’s love.

LOVE: Do Not Be Afraid

Read: Luke 2:8-10

By Elizabeth Ignasher

The angel said to her, "Do not be afraid, Mary, for you have found favour with God." - Luke 1:30
Recently a friend said she was trying to learn to love without fear. And I thought YES – I want to learn that too.

But love is scary. People we love sometimes let us down, get sick, leave, betray us, suffer, and die. Every loving relationship holds its share of disappointments and pain. Many break our hearts. Who wouldn’t be afraid?

Yet God demonstrated the most wholehearted love ever known by sending God’s own beloved son to earth as a vulnerable baby FOR US. Surely God knew what we would do to that precious child. And God so loved the world that God sent him anyway.

In Luke’s story of this great love, the first reaction of almost everyone, upon hearing about it, is FEAR. The angels have to keep repeating: “Do not be afraid.”

What was it about seeing the “glory of the Lord” that terrified them? Perhaps they somehow understood this was a two-way street. God’s great love invites our wholehearted love in return, and we all know what that leads to…

Fear says: I don’t deserve this much love. I am alone. I am not enough. I can’t love this much. I will make a fool of myself. My heart will break.

And Love answers: I am giving you my very own son because I love you. I am with you in this tiny baby, who is the most powerful force in all of heaven and earth. Even after he dies he will live and remain with you. Love like this baby. Babies have no regard for the world’s opinion. Let your heart break – it’s worth it. You will find treasures inside when it breaks open.

No one wants to feel fear, and that keeps many of us from loving with our whole hearts. But love stares fear down and decides to risk it.

LOVE: God Loves Us All

Read: Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 and Luke 1:26-38

By Perry Dixon

Before providentially finding Covenant this past June, I was amidst a year working with Wellspring, in Louisville, Ky. With Wellspring, my job was to help clients with severe and persistent schizophrenia learn to live independently in the city. Each day, I traveled all over, helping clients manage medications, attend appointments, manage budgets, learn cooking skills, develop healthy habits and navigate the labyrinth of dysfunction that is any government office. I could never explain all that I encountered in that wild, difficult, beautiful year.

When I first began, I was somewhat afraid. Those of us who have grown up in major cities know the unsettling feeling of a mentally ill person roaming nearby unmedicated on the street or on a bus. How easy it is to ignore someone we do not understand. My clients experienced persistent symptoms despite being on serious, regimented medications. The reality is that living in recovery from mental illness is complex, individually unique, and nothing like those of us in relative mental health might imagine.

One of my clients was a few years older than me, had survived homelessness for years in Chicago, lived with severe schizophrenia, as well as borderline intellectual functioning and Asperger's. Truly, he was a joy to work with each day, and hilarious too. As we tried to make brownies in a waffle iron one morning, much to his delight, God's love for him and for me could not have been more apparent. This Christmas, we remember that God’s love has abundance for the mentally ill, and even for us, too.

JOY: How Will We Prepare?

Read: Luke 3:1-6

By Jessica Patchett

In those days, in those crazy days, when the world seemed to be in constant turmoil and people couldn’t figure out who was trying to save the day and who would pose the next threat ... in those painfully somber days when people couldn't take one more bad news story … the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah in the wilderness.

In those days, in those busy days, when religious hearts found hope in King Herod’s construction project at Temple Mount in Jerusalem and political minds searched for wisdom among decrees from Rome and Syria … the word of God came to John, son of Zechariah … in the wilderness.

They were days not unlike our days. Regional power players sparred in local insurrections; families caught in hotzones weighed the terror of violence at home against the fear of becoming migrants in foreign lands; and religious leaders scrambled to construct moral and ethical scaffolding around the deteriorating old world order.

They were unsettling days. As confusion and chaos clamored on at full volume, the word of God whispered in the wilderness, “Prepare the way of the Lord; make his paths straight. Every valley be filled, every mountain and hill be made low; the crooked be made straight and the rough ways made smooth; and all flesh shall see the salvation of God."

The word of God, the salvation of God didn’t emerge from Jerusalem … or Rome … or the Temple … or a safe home or state-of-the-art hospital. The word of God was heard in the wilderness and born to a couple who became refugees trying to save their newborn son from being killed by a vengeful king.

Human beings saw the salvation of God born in a manger, in part, because of the selfless hospitality of a Palestinian innkeeper. Shepherds keeping their flocks by night saw the salvation of God, in part, because wise Eastern emissaries shifted their allegiances from a vengeful king to the prince of peace. We have seen the salvation of God grow in wisdom and stature, in part, because everyday Egyptians welcomed two young Jewish refugees who gave up everything to keep their child, God’s child, safe from harm.

A Palestinian innkeeper, Eastern wise men and dignitaries, Egyptian families, and Jewish refugees prepared the way for all flesh to see the salvation of God.

In these crazy, busy, unsettling, fearful days, I wonder, how will we do the same?

JOY: Where is the Joy Made Real?

By Sally Graves

A vacuum! It’s a vacuum! It’s a vacuum for me! Yay!

It was actually a dust-buster on a handle, but in the eyes of my 3-year-old grandson, he had been given (by his parents) the best possible birthday present. No need for other presents (grandparents' best efforts to the contrary). Hold off on the candles and the singing. This was delight in its full perfection, not to be distracted. We could see it on his face, hear it in his voice, read it in his body language. A new-found vacuum treasure in a house full of carpets. Joy without limit; joy made real. In so many ways it was a moment above the rest; a moment to savor.

For me, the vacuum cleaner moment has long since passed, but the savoring remains. It’s a delight that often plays in my head (and on my phone, if you’d care to see it). It takes me back to the image of a child, my grandchild, so fully known and wonderfully loved that the only possible response, from him and all who shared that moment, was joy.

And now, here were are in Advent, with Christmas close at hand. For many, the delights of the season are easy and everywhere. For others, they are diluted by distractions. Calendars are crammed with commitments. Heartache makes the reality of delight hard to hold. And so we wonder: Where are our vacuum cleaner moments, the ones that ask us to stop and savor, that insist that we are fully known and wonderfully loved? Where is the joy made real? Waiting for us, in a manger.