Your greatest gift may lie yet undiscovered…
This is a season in which both joy and loneliness can be amplified. Many will reconnect with families and friends to eat and laugh and relax. For others loneliness will be intensified. The very fact that so many families come together and celebrate magnifies their own disconnected lives. When we don’t experience the love of other human beings, the love of God seems equally distant.
But this is exactly what made the life and message of Jesus so significant. In the midst of people going about their daily lives – with the same desires and concerns we have today – while religious thinkers were speculating about a holy god, Jesus confronted us with a new reality.
Those who knew Jesus, struggled for years to find better words to describe what they witnessed. Somehow they glimpsed God in this human. Somehow, in this person of Jesus, God was no longer a distant or separate being, but a tangible and present reality.
The love He showed for friends and strangers alike, made God more visible than what they ever imagined God could be. Love locates God, not in some otherworldly spiritual realm, but in flesh. Our speculations about a distant being are exposed for the foolishness they are, as this human being, Jesus, unveils the mystery that we are all entangled in. The very movement of relationship, the love that connects us, is the presence of the God who has never been distant.
Jesus experienced times of popularity with some, and times of rejection by even his closest friends. The full scope of the human experience, from ecstatic joy to unbearable pain, was evident in his life, yet the God he knew was not absent from any of those experiences. He even describes his own death as an act of love. (Jn. 15:13)
So whatever circumstances you find yourself in this season, whether in the midst of loving family or not, know that you are loved. And an awareness of this love transforms our experience. You have so much to give even if you do not have a cent. Your kindness, your love can be the very presence of God for another person. May Jesus come again this season … may he come through you.
Besides the “selah” moment, thank you Andre for the glorious prayer: “may Jesus come again this season…may He come through you.” (I’ve been talking with Him about the rifts going on among my three sisters).
My mind took me back to the story I heard just before coming upon these heart-warming thoughts you shared. It so happened in the story, when this hard-core burglar was about to leave with a bagful of his specially picked items, he heard a second softer sound. The first sound was the snoring of a sleeping nanny that had put a grin on his face earlier. But there was something about the second sound that so drew this in-and-out burglar’s attention, that he turned back. It came from a baby standing in a cot. Immediately, the baby’s smile beckoned him closer until this hard-core burglar found his hand making connection with a smile that somehow made him feel accepted for the first time. The feeling of acceptance was intensified when his finger was wrapped by the baby’s little hand amid bursts of giggles. Suddenly this hard-core burglar recalled the words of his Sunday School teacher: “No matter how bad you become in life, Jesus will never stop loving you.” The story ends with this hard-core burglar emptying out his bag in the corridor, going to church, telling the pastor about his encounter with Jesus in the smile and touch of the baby, and being born again.
Wow! Such tangible love indeed. Thank You Papa God!
What a touching story Stena. A moment of awareness can turn the ordinary into divine encounter.
Thanks Andre for another beautiful Christmas message and prayer!
Your last paragraph summarised it all!
Yes, Stena’s stony is so touching indeed.
May Jesus come through us all this year and beyond.