Third Sunday of Advent 2008 – Love
*I meant to have this up on Sunday, but I've been too sick to think the past few days… so better late than never.
"Love is not love which alters when it alteration finds" – Shakespeare, Sonnet 116
"But God demonstrates His own love toward us, in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us." – Romans 5:8
This week of Advent we light the candle representing love (depending on your tradition). As with peace, I find that this too is a word that has been stripped of its meaning in our culture. Not that the many usages of the term or the various ways we evoke the concept are bad, but often they are simply comfortable. We can handle advice that encourages us to unconditionally love our husbands and kids, that our love should be patient and kind, or that our love should flow from our relationship with God. Those expressions of love may be difficult, but we can accept them in theory at least.
What's harder is the messy love. The love that continues even though someone messes up. The love for people who just aren't living the way we would like them to live. The love for those who serve us that we may never meet. These sorts of love are more difficult to grasp. They don't fit into our comfort boxes. They not only take work, they are generally unpopular and often not deemed worth our effort.
So I find myself returning to the rhetorical questions – what if Jesus hadn't chosen to love us no matter what? Can you picture Jesus saying things like – "they're just too messed up for me to love them" or "she's a sinner, I don't want anything to do with her, if fact I'll just pretend she doesn't exist" or "why should I waste my time dying for a cog in the machine factory girl in China."
I like the assurance that Jesus loves me, but sometimes it's hard to believe that Jesus loves everyone. I mean really believe – not just intellectually assent to the idea, but believe enough to let it change me so that I love them too.
To love without reservation or alteration. To love the yet messy.
That's the hard part.
julieclawson(at)gmail(dot)com 
Julie you are so right about "To love without reservation or alteration. To love the yet messy."
True Peace, true Love. Two seeming unscalable heights for me. I try……..
Bruce
I had a professor in college who once confessed, "I don't really have any enemies. The ones I struggle to love are the irritants, those folks who take more time and effort than you want to give."
This is my struggle too. And yet I remember that Christ came because we were sheep without a shepherd and I recall the stupidity and stubbornness of sheep and I'm reminded that to love like Christ is to embrace the nitty gritty and not just the grand.
God loves us enough to quench the fires of hell, completely.
thanks for sharing this. i always enjoy seeing things with new eyes through the advent season of life.