Anticipating...Love

I love Christmas.  I mean, there is so much to love about the season isn’t there? I love the excitable nature of the children when it comes time to decorate the tree.  There is nothing quite like the shrill of a gleeful young voice, who has just had her favorite ornament stolen by her brother and broken in a spontaneous wrestling match! I love fixing broken ornaments…and lamps. 

I love having all kinds of delicious cookies and treats to test my will power…and fail.  I love adding additional holes in my belt with each passing week!...I have already added THREE this year…well…I “anticipate” adding three!

I love the Christmas music!  I wish I could listen to those same 3 songs all year long.

Most of all…I love the Christmas lights…when else do I get a chance to go on top of an icy roof and use little plastic clips that break in the 20 degree 20mph wind conditions to hang little clear glass bulbs from my gutters.  I love that fact that just being up there reminds me that I didn’t clean the gutters or down spouts last fall…or last summer…or last spring…or ever…I could do it now if the water wouldn’t freeze before it made its way to the ground…that would be fun too! 

I love how the light bulbs and wires get all caught up on each other and won’t come apart…and when you pull them out of the box and plug them in it looks like Frosty’s head, all glowing and cheery…and creepy.  I love how it’s like solving a Rubik’s cube to untangle them…I love puzzles. 

I love spending hours replacing all of the burnt out and broken bulbs.  It’s so fun trying to find the one single bulb that is keeping all of the other lights from working. 

I love how, when you finally get them all hung and you plug them in and admire your work, there is a 5 ft. section in the middle that doesn’t work…that’s my favorite!

Truth be told…if that is what I loved about Christmas…I’d likely find myself in a deep vegetative state sitting in the corner mumbling…“HO, HO, HO, HO, HO, HO” while trying to fix that broken ornament of my daughter’s.

No…what I love most about Christmas…is love.  There are 66 books in the Bible…60 of them use some form of the word love…some 686 times…which leaves me to assume, that love must be a pretty important message throughout the Scriptures.  In John 3:16, we find a powerful and profound statement…“For God so loved the world, that he gave his one and only Son.”  That is the epitome of Christmas.  God loves you…and gave you his Son…Jesus.  Merry Christmas!

What is even more humbling to me, is what we find in Romans 5:8…“God demonstrates his own love for us in this…while we were still sinners…Christ died for us.” Again…Merry Christmas!

Christmas…love it or hate it…it doesn’t change the love that Jesus Christ has for each one of us. It is a gift that has been given from God…to us…and no matter what you do…you cannot separate yourself from it.  You cannot flee his love…you cannot hide from his love…in the depths of our despair…his love is there.  Whether you are having a good day…a great day…or a day that resembles Mary Queen of Scott’s last day at Fotheringhay Castle…his love is there. 

That is what Christmas is all about…a Love that came down.