Just About Everyone Agrees That Christmas Is About Love … Hello weekend readers. We end our devotion about gifts of hope, peace, joy and now love in this weekend musing. The Barna Group culled over 2500 people about Christmas means love. Interestingly, whether they were Christians or not, over 78% pretty much agreed. Why? The power of love. Even those with no faith claimed that love had a power more than any other words. You and I know that too—we can attest to that because Christmas only exists because of love—God’s love! I contacted them wanting to know if they asked questions about what love meant to them. To my surprise they did, but too many (faith/no faith) struggled for an answer. So, they stopped the polling—too many were completely stumped!

Tim Challies, pastor/speaker/author from Ontario, was one of the pollsters from the Barna Group. When his stint was done, he went to his office to process what he had gone through. One thing kept poking his mind: “just about everyone agreed that Christmas was about love, yet, many could not define it.” For days it bugged him and then, while drying dishes with his wife at home he shouted out “If you want to describe what love is, you could also do it in two words: Jesus Christ!” His wife looked at him somewhat puzzled and said, “of course dear, we all know that” and he replied, “No, we say it but do we really know it?”

The most words written in Scripture about love is Corinthians 1:13. The Apostle Paul used over 200 words to describe love, here’s a few: “Love is patient and kind. Love is not jealous or boastful or proud or rude. It does not demand its own way. It is not irritable, and it keeps no record of being wronged. It does not rejoice about injustice but rejoices whenever the truth wins out. Love never gives up, never loses faith, is always hopeful, and endures through every circumstance. Three things will last forever—faith, hope, and love—and the greatest of these is love.” [4-7;13 NLT]

Was your Christmas a frantic time or are you still basking in the season? For some, the next day the Christmas tree goes down along with the decorations and back to regular life—what ever that means! What was Christmas love to them? What is it to you? What gifts of love did you get at Christmas—can you define why they were so loved? You see, we can open a gift and shout out “O, I love this” and then we go right on to the next thing. Did that love give you any sustaining peace, hope or joy? Don’t me wrong, we love the presents we get, even the ugly Christmas sweater—but how do you compare that to the love of Jesus?

The message of Christmas brings us back to the first principles by showing us what true love is. And the first principle is always this: Jesus gave everything he had because he loved us. He gave his body to the cross because he loved us. Before that, he lived his life in a loveless world because he loved us. But first of all, he came because he loved us! The Creator became part of his creation; the Lord of glory came to this fallen earth to take upon himself the consequences of our sins. Wow, now that is truly a Christmas gift and one that never wavers or ends (kind of like a fruitcake but a whole lot better!).

Jesus showed us what love is—simply being like him, which means that Love is a lot more than just having good feelings and neat presents. It IS the greatest thing in the world, but it is also the most demanding. The Christian faith has a ‘grammar’ all of its own. We can’t mess it up or we will not be able to speak the Gospel properly so we can give people the life-giving hope, peace, joy and love they are seeking. We are called to be rooted in that faith so we can share at Christmas and all times, about the love of Jesus for us and ALL people.

The Christmas story is just this: “it’s when love came down” and never left. Now that is the best gift that keeps on giving not just at Christmas but a pure Love all year long! AMEN.