Love ~ The Fourth Word of Christmas

Love – The Fourth Word of Christmas

Let’s talk about love – especially love at Christmas.  And the love we will consider is Agape love – the highest form of love.  It speaks of God’s love for man and man’s love for God.

Love, to be experienced, needs someone to receive it.  God placed a special value on mankind.  He made man just a little lower than His angels.  Mankind was formed in the image of God.  God wanted communion with man.  He wanted to express love and to receive love in return from man.

And so, He put within man the ability to express emotions – laugher, sorrow, happiness, joy, and of course love. 

And mankind still didn’t get it. 

~God offered the eternal.  Man wanted the immediate.

~God offered deep joy.  Man wanted thrills.

~God offered freedom.  Man wanted license.

~God offered communion with Himself.  Man wanted to worship at the shrine of his own mind.

~God offered peace.  Man wanted approval for his wars and fighting.*

Even so, God continued to reach out to mankind with love.  Simple, unadorned love.

When man kept rejecting His advances, God chose another way.  He gave up the Crown Jewel of Heaven – His son, as a baby in a manger.

Jesus was the bundle of love that God offered.  He dared to take on humanity in the form of a child, with an ultimate plan of redemption for all mankind.  He wanted to end the separation once and for all. 

And so, Christ was born. 

God’s love was reaching out to us from the manger, from the cries and tiny hands of this baby. 

That is what the great God of this universe chose to do.  He became one of us.  What He wanted to say all along was this … “I REALLY LOVE YOU.”

Christmas is a lot of things. 

Beautiful lights

Lovely decorations

Gifts given and received

Gathering times for family and those we cherish

Activities galore, stage plays, musicals, concerts

Music to take your breath away

Food in excess

But the overriding aspect we must grasp … Christmas is a great love story.

And that love reaches all the way to where you and I are living. 

It is for us!  FOR US! 

Unto us a Child is born.

Unto us a Son is given!

(*This portion of today’s blog is based on a small segment from His Love Reaching, by Bill and Gloria Gaither)

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