Advent Week 4: Love
Author: Abi Oxley-Derrick
December 22, 2021
It’s officially the last week before Christmas! During the week that is traditionally overrun with errands and wrapping and cooking and last minute shopping, the meaning of Christmas can slip away as chaos allows frustration to seep in. I don’t think that it’s a coincidence that the last week of Advent is centered around the theme of love. When it’s easier to gripe at family because you’re overwhelmed, or yell at the person in the parking lot because there are no more spots left, love is a perfect reminder as to what this week means and why we do all of the shopping and cooking and festivities. We see love everywhere during the Christmas Season, and it truly encompasses the holiday perfectly.
Think about all of the moms, dads, grandparents, aunts, uncles, and friends who spend time, effort, money, to find and carefully wrap all of the gifts for their family. Think about all of the people who make sacrifices to ensure that their children have the perfect Christmas. Think about the people up at 5am on Christmas morning cooking for 20+ people. Think about folks who work overtime and countless hours so that people can enjoy the Christmas season and make memories. This holiday is so wrapped in love, but without the truest act of love none of it even matters.
“For God so loved the world, that he gave his only Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have eternal life.”
The gift of Jesus, the gift of Salvation and an eternity spent with our heavenly father is the purest, sweetest act of love we can experience. As you spend this week shopping, wrapping, with your family and friends, do not let the enemy taint one moment of your time on trivial frustrations. Rather, dwell in the love that comes on from Jesus Christ, and is the reason we celebrate this week. I want to challenge you to meditate on this scripture from 1st John 4, and walk in love this week!
Beloved, let us love one another, for love is from God, and whoever loves has been born of God and knows God. Anyone who does not love does not know God, because God is love. In this the love of God was made manifest among us, that God sent his only Son into the world, so that we might live through him. In this is love, not that we have loved God but that he loved us and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins. Beloved, if God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; if we love one another, God abides in us and his love is perfected in us. By this we know that we abide in him and he in us, because he has given us of his Spirit. And we have seen and testify that the Father has sent his Son to be the Savior of the world. Whoever confesses that Jesus is the Son of God, God abides in him, and he in God. So we have come to know and to believe the love that God has for us. God is love, and whoever abides in love abides in God, and God abides in him. By this is love perfected with us, so that we may have confidence for the day of judgment, because as he is so also are we in this world. There is no fear in love, but perfect love casts out fear. For fear has to do with punishment, and whoever fears has not been perfected in love. We love because he first loved us. If anyone says, “I love God,” and hates his brother, he is a liar; for he who does not love his brother whom he has seen cannot love God whom he has not seen. And this commandment we have from him: whoever loves God must also love his brother.
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