Advent 2022 - Love

Devotion for the Week...

Here we are, in the final week of Advent, already. Over the past three weeks, we've looked at the traditional Advent themes of hope, peace and joy, which means this week the theme is love.

I hope you have someone in your life who loves you well. Someone who makes you feel safe and treasured, no matter what. Someone who makes you feel good about yourself and who doesn't try to get you to change. For just a moment, think about how it feels to be around that person and how that person makes you feel about yourself.

Now, with that feeling fresh in your mind, think about this: God loves you so much more than that person ever could.

I know, it's hard to comprehend, isn't it? How could we be loved more than this person loves us? And yet the Bible tells us that "God is love" (1 John 4:8) and "For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life" (John 3:16). That last, very famous, verse says God loved the world, but really it means God loved the individual people who make up the world. He loved you and me so much that He sent Jesus to rescue us from our sins.

Because we can't see God, we often have a hard time feeling His love. We can't get a hug from Him or see His smile when we walk into the room. Without those physical reminders of His love, it can feel kind of abstract. But when Christmas comes around again, we are reminded that Jesus gave up all the glories of heaven and came to earth as a baby. Eternal God became a helpless child, dependent on human parents for everything. He had to learn to walk and talk. He had to endure sickness and physical limitations. There's no reason He would make that sacrifice, unless He was getting something better in return. Isn't it amazing to realize that what He was getting in return was relationship with us?