Love - Advent 3
"Love" is an abused word. In fact, it may be the most abused word in the English language these days. So when we come to the third week of Advent, the week when the word is "love," we typically think of the mushy sentiment represented in Hallmark movies and cards. We think of hearts, flowers and little angels in diapers firing heart-tipped arrows.
I bet we don't tend to think of death.
Love, you see, is an abused word because we use it too frequently, too familiarly. We love our coffee. We love our home. We love the snow (or not). We love our toothpaste, our deodorant, and our cars. We love inanimate objects, particular brands and the way something or someone looks.
What we don't do is love the way Jesus tells us to love.
"Greater love has no one than this," Jesus told his disciples one day, "to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). If you love something, really love it or them the way Jesus says to, you're willing to give your life for it.
I don't know about you, but I'm not bonded enough to my corn flakes that I'd die for them. I enjoy particular television shows, but I wouldn't lay down my life for them. The true test of love is whether or not you would be willing to love that thing or that person like Jesus did—because what he described to his disciples, he later went ahead and did. He laid down his life for them, and for us, because he'd rather die than live without us.
For me, then, that kind of love pretty much leaves out any inanimate object. My chai tea latte is a regular part of my routine, but it's not worth dying for (sorry, Starbucks!). My family, the friends I've found I can depend on through the years, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—it's really only people I can truly love, because it's only for them that I could honestly lay down my life.
This baby who is coming to be born in Bethlehem came to die. As Graham Kendrick once said in a song, there were thorns in the straw, the shadow of a cross over the stable. Jesus came to give his life for us; that was his purpose—to show us the way of real, true love.
So...what do you love? Or, rather, whom do you love?
I bet we don't tend to think of death.
Love, you see, is an abused word because we use it too frequently, too familiarly. We love our coffee. We love our home. We love the snow (or not). We love our toothpaste, our deodorant, and our cars. We love inanimate objects, particular brands and the way something or someone looks.
What we don't do is love the way Jesus tells us to love.
"Greater love has no one than this," Jesus told his disciples one day, "to lay down one's life for one's friends" (John 15:13). If you love something, really love it or them the way Jesus says to, you're willing to give your life for it.
I don't know about you, but I'm not bonded enough to my corn flakes that I'd die for them. I enjoy particular television shows, but I wouldn't lay down my life for them. The true test of love is whether or not you would be willing to love that thing or that person like Jesus did—because what he described to his disciples, he later went ahead and did. He laid down his life for them, and for us, because he'd rather die than live without us.
For me, then, that kind of love pretty much leaves out any inanimate object. My chai tea latte is a regular part of my routine, but it's not worth dying for (sorry, Starbucks!). My family, the friends I've found I can depend on through the years, my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ—it's really only people I can truly love, because it's only for them that I could honestly lay down my life.
This baby who is coming to be born in Bethlehem came to die. As Graham Kendrick once said in a song, there were thorns in the straw, the shadow of a cross over the stable. Jesus came to give his life for us; that was his purpose—to show us the way of real, true love.
So...what do you love? Or, rather, whom do you love?
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