love

There are people I love like crazy, but sometimes I’m shocked at how badly I treat them. Even my best, most pure attempts at love are in some measure self-centered. My closest, longest relationships are filled with more regret than my failed ones.

I think that’s good, overall. I think it’s because I care about those people so much, and want so badly to get it right. But it’s a problem, and at bottom, as they all turn out to be, it’s a sin problem.

But here’s hope, in something I read this morning from 1 John 4:7-12: “Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”

It's another thing I can and do thank Jesus for – that the closer I am to him, the more I’m able to love. And that the more I love, the more God lives in me, and his love is made complete in me.

As I consider how the Jewish people longed for their Messiah, as I reflect on the people living in darkness, I always end up thinking about my own darkness. I think about who and what I’d be without Jesus, and all the things I used to do before I began my holiness journey.

It’s an amazing thing, to see how much better I can love people since I started walking with Jesus. It’s another reason Christmas is a big deal.