Love

And at last we have arrived at the fourth week of Advent — always the shortest of the weeks, because Christmas is literally just around the corner. But what a big word to be hosted by such a short week!

Love. The fourth week of Advent is all about love.

We think we know what love is. We have lots and lots and lots of songs that attempt to define what love is. Love is finding the right person. Love is being "really connected." Love is never having to say you're sorry (yeah, right...).

Many wise people have tried to define love. "Love is a friendship that has caught fire." "Love is when the other person's happiness is more important than your own." "Love makes the world go around."

And most, if not all, of our understandings of love focus on the feelings, the warmth, the hearts and flowers. But what if love isn't like that? What if true love is something else?

What is real love looks like sacrifice?

What if it looks like a young woman who gives up her hopes and dreams for the future, who agrees to a plan she knows everyone else will think is crazy and agrees to become to mother of the Son of God? What if it looks like a blue collar working man who gives up his reputation in order to protect both the mother and the child? What if it looks like fleeing from an angry king and living in a strange land for many years?

What if it means having your heart torn in two when, out of concern for your son, you go and try to get him to slow down and eat—and he doesn't even invite you in? More than that, he says the people who do the will of God are really his family. What if love hurts? What if it looks like foregoing your own needs and desires because his mission is more important than your needs?

And what if it looks like that young woman now older, standing at the foot of a Roman cross, watching the life she helped bring into the world ebb out of his body? What if it means being covered with the blood of the son who was never really yours while he gives his life for the sake of the world?

What if love looks like that?

In the manger is the shadow of the cross because love does look like that. Love is cruciform. Love stretches out its hands and lays down its feet and says, "I'm giving my life so that you can find yours."

Love looks like that.


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