This is Love
Earlier this week, I joined some people from our church to go Christmas caroling for some of our church family who are shut-in or otherwise unable to come to church. We do this every year, and I always look forward to it.
Every year, one of my favorite stops is the home of a dear elderly lady for whom we have caroled for many years. She loves music, and always stood at her door with a great big smile, and always said we sounded beautiful—even on years when our group struggled to carry a tune. This year, we caroled for her at a care home, and her memory has now deteriorated to the point that she didn’t recognize even those of us to whom she is still a dear friend.
Yet, as we sang, tears of joy came to her eyes, and when we gathered around to greet her and take a picture with her, she beamed at us and told her caregivers,
“This is love.”
And isn’t that just a picture of the heart of God displayed that very first Christmas? This lady, dear though she is to us, cannot love us back in the same way now. She will never reciprocate by singing at our doors, she cannot even get out to church now. She is wholly dependent upon her caregivers, yet she recognized the fact that love—God’s love remembers the forgotten, reaches out to the distant, and surrounds the loved one with joy and peace. She recognized the love that serves without expecting any return for the effort. 1 John 4:10 puts it this way:
“Herein is love, not that we loved God, but that He loved us, and sent His Son to be the propitiation for our sins.”
Last Christmas, I came across a poem in a novel, of all places, that struck my heart with a new understanding of the love of God for us unlovely sinners. I didn’t care for the poem at first—it’s not a style I am typically drawn to—but the last stanza grabbed me. (So read to the end—it’ll be worth it!)
Let the Stable Still Astonish
Leslie Leyland Fields
Let the stable still astonish:
Straw-dirt floor, dull eyes,
Dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
No bed to carry that pain,
And then, the child,
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry
In a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said: “Yes,
Let the God of all the heavens and earth
Be born here, in this place?
Who but the same God
Who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts
And says, “Yes, let the God of heaven and earth
be born here—in this place.
As Christmas begins, let the stable astonish you with a new appreciation of the love of Christ that moved Him to make His dwelling place in your heart.
“For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in Him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” John 3:16