God’s Expansive Love

The author Anne Lamott tells a beautiful story about a fellow church member who had adopted her son through an organization called ASK: Adopt Special Kids. Part of the adoption process included filling out a questionnaire, checking yes or no to your willingness to adopt babies that had been born addicted, terminally ill, with physical “defects,” or mental disabilities. She and her husband had checked down the entire list. Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Lamott’s pastor said that God is like that too, like an adoptive parent who says, “Sure, I’ll take the kids who are addicted, or terminal. I pick all the (mentally challenged) kids and, of course, the sadists. The selfish ones, the liars… I choose them. I choose the disobedient ones and the terrified ones. The self-indulged ones and the trouble-makers. The damaged ones and the unlovable ones. In love, I choose them all. I will be a parent to them all.”

That depth of love, that expansive love, given for you, is the gift we receive at Christmas.

In the Gospel of John we read, “For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son…”

Let us pray: We remember today that you so love the world that you gave your Son as a light to the world. Break into our lives anew, and help us to notice your unconditional love still at work in our lives and in the world around us. And then, Great God, empower us to be instruments of that same love, light, and grace all year long; through Christ our Lord. Amen.