The Unconditional, Unwavering, Unfaltering Love of God

A few years ago, my friend Andy traveled to the Holy Land. He said that while visiting the Church of the Nativity in Manger Square in Bethlehem, he was caught off guard. He was expecting to see the spot where Jesus was first laid and took his first breath, but what he was not expecting to see was that right next to the manger itself, separated only by a wall built much later, sits the tomb of the innocents. It is a memorial to the firstborns killed in Herod’s attempt to end Jesus’s life before it ever got started.

He said, standing there in between the manger and the tomb was jarring. It was a stark reminder of humanity’s capacity for inhumanity… and then in contrast: God’s tremendous love for us – a love that cannot be snuffed out.

When reflecting on her own visit to the manger, author and pastor Danielle Shroyer writes about being there, “You can imagine Jesus sleeping… with Mary and Joseph nearby, all of them unaware that soon enough the kingdoms of this world will start coming for him, starting first with Herod and ending with the full power of the Roman Empire itself. In between, he will bring discomfort to every kind of power this world has to offer: political and economic power, religious power, powers of class and gender and ethnicity, powers of nation and state. He will even disrupt natural powers: disease, storms, a simple loaf of bread. This child is King, and there is no place on which his authority does not rest. He will ultimately replace all those misplaced attempts at power with the only force that can undo them: the unconditional, unwavering, unfaltering love of God.”

In his Gospel, John describes Christmas like this: For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son… And the Word became flesh and lived among us… What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. And the light shines in the darkness and the darkness did not overcome it.

My prayer for you this Christmas, that you would glimpse again the unconditional, unwavering, unfaltering love of God – love that is more powerful than the darkness, more powerful than illness, more powerful than the powers that seek to divide us in this nation, more powerful than hate or greed or brokenness. It is a love that is calling out the better side of humanity – healing, redeeming, forgiving, and calling us to follow…

Let us pray: On this Holy Day, the celebration of the birth of your son, Lord God, we worship you, we adore you, we praise you. We remember today that Christmas is about a birth. It is a beginning, a new start. Give us eyes to see the places where the light is overtaking the darkness, and hearts to follow the light. Fill each of us with the beauty of this day until we overflow in joy and praise. We ask in Jesus’s name. Amen.