December 22, 2025

FOURTH WEEK OF ADVENT: LOVE

GOD’S WORD FOR TODAY:

“‘For no word from God will ever fail.’ said the angel of the Lord. ‘I am the Lord’s servant,‘ Mary answered. ‘May your word to me be fulfilled.’” (Luke 1.37-38a)

TODAY’S REFLECTION ON GOD’S WORD:

If we don’t love God first with all our heart, mind soul and strength, then it is difficult to truly love anything else. I read a study recently which highlighted the biological truth that humans (and I would say all living things) are wired for the need of touch. I reflected earlier on the word and title ascribed to Jesus as the Christ to be “Immanuel,” God with us. In that reflection, I proposed that in Jesus we are able to feel the very touch of God. As the “Word made flesh,” incarnation, human beings are able to be touched by the “love of God.” God’s sincere desire is to fulfill our soul’s sincerest desire. While we want love and to be loved, we sometimes sell ourselves short believing that such an experience can only come in terms of our existence in the world as part of the world. Jesus came to show us there is another and better way. To be in contact with God’s pure love allows us to know when we are truly in love and loved.

Mary knew of that love herself. She had committed herself to loving God and serving Him first and only. Yes, she was a child somewhere between the age of 12 and 14. As such, she lived in innocence knowing that her life was intended to honor and worship Her creator. She was obedient to that call for which she was made. Because she loved God so much, she found favor in Him and was blessed with the greatest service of all: to bring the Son of God into the world. In some ways, her response to the Angel of the Lord’s announcement that she would bear a child was similar to that of Nicodemus’s response to Jesus’ declaration “You must be born again.” Those responses were purely out of the worldly understanding of life. They fell short of “…with God all things are possible.” Mary responded with “How can this be because I am a virgin?” Nicodemus replied to Jesus saying “Must I enter my mother’s womb a second time?” Both responses are centered on the question of new life which only God can make possible. It is a possibility only because of God’s great love for His creation.

Mary’s “new life” is emblematic of the story of creation itself. We have talked about how God took the chaos of unordered matter and essentially created all that there is from what was seen as nothing. Mary, as a virgin who had spent her life in the shadow of the Temple, was chosen by God to demonstrate God’s ability to bring life out of nothingness. At God’s command the Holy Spirit came over her as it did at the beginning of the creation of the heavens and the earth. Out of the depth of God’s love for order and peace, life was drawn up out of the waters and became the foundation for all other living things. That very foundation of the earth under the influence of God’s “Word” culminated in the birthing of man and woman in the image which God has defined as perfection. That image was that of the Savior of the world. What it must have been like for Mary to see her own reflection in the eyes of the One born as the Lamb of God who had come to take away the sins of the world. It was the reflection of God’s true love.

For Nicodemus, “new life” was about salvation as well. It would come not by the birthing miracle as between husband and wife but the confession and submission of one’s will into the very hands of God. His story was similar to that of Adam and Eve who entered into the realm of sin and placed their new lives in mortal and spiritual jeopardy. If not for the love of God for His creation, they could have simply be reduced to the dust from which they came. God could have started over with a new creation. Yet, God so loved Adam and Eve that He offered a sacrifice for them because they confessed their failure to honor and trust Him with their lives. They were thus “born again” in spirit and in truth because of God’s decision to sacrifice one life for another. It would be symbolic of what would happen when Jesus was God’s sacrifice for our lives on the cross.

Only in our confession, like that of Mary and Nicodemus, that we are not able to accomplish and receive the glory of salvation without God’s mercy, grace and intervention can we have true life. Our confession of trust in God’s decision to redeem us instead of destroying brings about the greatest effect of His willingness to love us into life instead of loving us to death. He is willing, if we are. Putting God first, loving Him first above all else, is what makes the miracle of life fulfilling and complete. This is why the command of love says: Love God, Love Neighbor, Love Self and Love One Another. Just as our joy is complete as we put our faith in God, so, too, is our love complete when we love God and love as God loves.

TODAY’S PRAYER IN RESPONSE TO GOD’S WORD:

Father, in these days we are finding the need to believe even more than ever before. We all have known trouble, some in greater ways than others, but You are offering us the assurance that we will not be consumed by it forever. Regardless of the “time” we are in and the “time” we have been given, we ask for Your Holy Spirit which Jesus asked You to share with us, to lead and guide and direct us in the paths we should go. Teach us what we still need to learn. Empower us to put that learning into action. Bless our actions not as a works righteousness but as righteous works of faith, hope and love in Jesus’ name. AMEN.