Issue No 207
‘Love came down at Christmas’ Love came down at Christmas, Love all lovely, Love Divine, Love was born at Christmas, Star and Angels gave the sign. Worship we the Godhead, Love Incarnate, Love Divine, Worship we our Jesus, But wherewith for sacred sign? Love shall be our token, Love be yours and love be mine, Love to God and all men, Love for plea and gift and sign. - Christina Rossetti We see this 1885 poem everywhere this time of year, in cards, on the radio and sung as a carol. Its enduring nature is, perhaps, down to the fact that the Christian faith is essentially about love – because God is love. At this time of the year we celebrate that ‘Love came down at Christmas’ to share our human life in the person of the infant Jesus. At Easter we celebrate the depths of that love in Christ dying for us and love’s triumph over death itself in the resurrection. At Pentecost we celebrate the coming of the Holy Spirit, ‘power from on high’, to enable us to love as God has loved us. It really is that simple. However, the problem – in case you hadn’t noticed – is that we don’t manage to love as God loves us. As we celebrate the Advent of the Prince of Peace humanity seems to have forgotten that ‘Love shall be our token’. Just weeks after we commemorated the centenary of what was referred to at the time as ‘the war to end all wars’ there is still so much violence,
Search for magazine online on Facebook
Magazine for the Builth Ministry Area December 2018/January 2019 bloodshed and oppression in the world. Why is that? Perhaps a reason we do not love as we ought is that we cannot, deep down, believe that we are loved or are even loveable. Most of our ‘sinfulness’ – in Christian terminology – derives from an insecurity, a deep dis-ease within. Ever since I became a Christian I have believed that I am unconditionally loved – in my head. The trouble is I couldn’t quite believe in my heart that anyone, let alone I, could be unconditionally loved. This is something that I have been struggling with even more over the last couple of years. I have read, I have listened to those wiser than myself, I have studied the holy scriptures. However, it was not until I had the power of love, of forgiveness demonstrated to me, that I felt that I was forgiven, and that in turn I was free to truly love. Now I can believe that God loves me unconditionally – with my heart as well as my head. I have a long way to go but I think that it has made me more loving. Our prayer this Christmas is that, wherever we are on our journey, we shall be given grace to believe with all our heart that God loves us more than we can possibly imagine with a love that is stronger than death and which will stretch into all eternity. Then we might be better able to love as God loves us.
Fthr Neil Hook EDITORSHIP If you wish to contact the editor, please note new email address: signpostsmagazine@gmail.com