Love. I would hazard a guess that nearly as many words have been written about love as have been written about God. Love assumes larger-than-life proportions in our contemporary times. Many people try to live their lives without God, but few can imagine living without love.
Sadly, there are far too many people in our world who DO live without love—or, at least, they think they do. What constitutes love for one person may not seem like love to another.
This is the premise of Gary Chapman’s book “The Five Love Languages.” Chapman’s idea is that every person expresses love differently and however they EXPRESS love is how they wish to RECEIVE love from others. It’s been a few years since I read the book, but I remember being amazed at what a simple concept this was.
Chapman identifies five different ways in which people express love: words of affirmation, quality time, gift giving, acts of service, and physical touch. When we figure out how someone shows their love to others, it helps us figure out how they want to be shown love. Of course, while we’re busy figuring this out, we are also doing something else that will grow love: We are listening. We are paying attention, deeply, to the myriad little cues others give us that communicate who they really are inside. We become observers of their dreams, their sorrows, their hopes, and their fears. We begin to see the world through their eyes and, with that, to see how they need to be loved.
It is easy enough to know how we need to be loved, but more challenging to figure out how someone else needs to be loved. But there IS someone who knows without question how we need to be loved. And that someone is gift-giver, affirmation-speaker, spender of quality time, and servant. He even came to us physically, albeit as a baby. Why? Because God listens. God observes our dreams, our sorrows, our hopes, and our fears. God knows us better than we know ourselves. God saw what humankind needed and gave us the best gift of all—God’s own love, enfleshed as one who lifts us with his words, spends as much time with us as we need, and leads us by serving. God knew what we needed most was to be loved, so God came down to us, all the love in the world wrapped in swaddling clothes.
And what does God want from us in return? We know, even when we don’t think we do. It’s love—God’s love flowing through us to others and back to God, filling us with peace.
May you experience the deep love that God has for you this season and always. May you see it, hear it, feel it, take it in, and give it away. May you know without a doubt that Jesus came down for YOU. Because God loves you. More than anything.
Merry Christmas.
