This blog post is proudly brought to you by Graeme’s recently released novel, The Guilt Busters
For many people around the world 2020 has been a year of incredible loss. Worldwide, millions have lost their lives. Many millions have lost loved ones. Millions have lost their businesses and tens of millions have lost their jobs. Where the chosen strategy of governments was lockdown, millions temporarily lost their freedom. Because Christmas is a festival that celebrates God’s amazing gift of love to the world it is clearly a time for us to remember what we have not lost.
It is important to remember that we have not lost the capacity to give and receive love. This year perhaps more than any other the words. ‘I love you’ have been verbalised. On the phone, on-line, in texts, letters and cards people who have been living in forced separation have said these very special words. While it is very important to express our love to those who are dear to us, it is just as important to consider the importance of expressing our love to our neighbours. We have heard many amazing stories about ordinary people reaching out to neighbours who they have not previously known, and by their practical demonstrations of compassion and generosity, have said ‘I love you.’
The most powerful expression of love is identification. When we are willing to pay whatever it costs to enter fully into another’s world, to experience the struggle and the pain that they know and to respond with empathy rather than judgement, that is identification and without identification there can be no real understanding. Paul Tournier, (To Understand Each Other) says, “It is quite clear that between love and understanding there is a very close link…He who loves understands and he who understands loves. One who feels understood feels loved and one who feels loved feels sure of being understood.”
If Christmas is about God becoming man and stepping into His own creation then in the light of my definition of identification, that s exactly what He was doing. There is no doubt that His understanding of us was complete but as humans we could not perceive that He could possibly understand us because he did not live in our world or walk in our shoes. For many people, the fact that we celebrate a supernatural event at Christmas is hard to embrace. The concept of a creator God becoming human and being born as a baby, at a particular point in history would be viewed by many as unlikely and others as inconsequential. For believers however, the incarnation represents the most significant and the most amazing expression of love in the history of humankind.
For the next 33 years God in the human form of Jesus lived on earth. For the final 3 years of that time, he performed miracles attested to by many witnesses, spoke with a wisdom that astounded his hearers, and after he was crucified rose from the dead. According to Jesus himself he came first so that we might know what the Father was like and second to make a pathway by which ordinary flawed human beings could enter into an intimate and everlasting relationship with God.
Whist it is unlikely that December 25th was the actual date of Jesus birth it has been the day that was chosen as an international celebration of the incarnation. Have you noticed how we celebrate it? We give gifts. Parents demonstrate their love to their children by showering them with gifts they know they will appreciate. Why? Because the incarnation has taught us that love is about giving. Every parent demonstrates their love for their children by giving, every single day, but once a year they celebrate love as the most unifying, nurturing and healing power known to man.
It is difficult to understand why as a world that has seen love so powerfully demonstrated to us through the life, death and resurrection of Jesus, we still see such destructive and loveless behaviour being perpetrated amongst us. I suggest that we are made to love and to worship and each person chooses to love and worship a deity, themselves or whatever they value most in their lives. Our choice determines our values, our values determine our behaviours and our behaviours either enrich or impoverish our relationships with others. Our capacity to love others and to respond with compassion to the broken in our world is greatly influenced by who and what we worship.
Christmas reminds us powerfully that loving our neighbours and our enemies is a byproduct of knowing that God loves us with a love so influential that it frees and empowers us to love all others as He loves us.
God Bless
Graeme
To read more about fear, healing, forgiveness and love check out Graeme’s latest book: The Guilt Busters