Author Candy Chand shares a powerful story in her little book Christmas Love. One Christmas, she struggled to find the true meaning of the celebration. Her son, Nicholas, was in kindergarten and had been memorizing songs for his school’s ”Winter Pageant.” Because the public school had stopped making any reference to “Christmas,” she expected nothing more than a commercialized presentation of reindeer, Santa Claus, snowflakes, and good cheer. So, Chand was surprised when Nicholas and his class bounded up to the stage to perform their song “Christmas Love.”
The class was dressed in their mittens, red sweaters, and hol-iday snow caps. As they sang, children in the front row held up large letters to spell out the title of the song. As they sang “C is for Christmas,” a child held up the letter C. Then, “H is for Happy” and a child held up the letter H. Each verse of the song coordinated with one of the letters. All was going smoothly until the little girl holding the “M” turned the letter upside down. She was unaware of her mistake, though the 1st through 6th graders snick-ered at the gaffe. The song continued, her blunder on display until the end.
Then the room grew quiet.
As the kindergarteners finished their production, all the letter-holders proudly lifted their cardboard initials in the air and there it was: CHRISTWAS LOVE. The message was loud and clear.
The wonder of Christmas is that it is a love story. Over and again, the Bible affirms God’s gracious love for humanity as a motivating factor for giving the gift of His Son:
“The Lord your God is with you, he is mighty to save. He will take great delight in you, he will quiet you with his love, he will rejoice over you with singing.” (Zephaniah 3:17)
“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life.” (John 3:16)
“This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins.” (1 John 4:9-10)
“But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:8)
Love is who God is and what God does. It is in His nature to love people, and Jesus is the proof of His love. But how? Just as it’s easy to see when a young man is in love with a girl, so it is easy to read the story of Jesus and see exactly how God proved His love for each one of us. Consider the following:
Love Pursues. When one person loves another, they run after them, court them, and do their best to win them over. They’re not satisfied to sit back and wait for the other to come to their senses. They launch a pursuit. This is what God did for us. Left to ourselves, we could have never found God by ourselves. So He found us. God left His throne in heaven and proved His love by chasing down unworthy sinners to make us His children. In the parables of the Lost Sheep and the Prodigal Son (Luke 15), Jesus highlights this pursuing love in the shepherd who leaves 99 lambs to find one wayward one and the father who saw his rebellious son “from a long way off” and graciously welcomed him home. God didn’t wait for us to come to Him; He loved us enough to come to us.
Love Sacrifices. Most jewelers say that a diamond is worth “whatever someone is willing to pay for it.” In other words, very few diamonds have any genuine worth except for the amount a lover is prepared to pay for his or her beloved. We prove our love for one another through sacrifice—gemstones, flowers, fine restaurants, and luxury vacations. God proves His love for us through extravagant sacrifice: the gift of His only Son. Jesus said, “Greater love has no one than this, that he lay down his life for his friends” (John 15:13).
Love Endures. As Paul completes his list of love-qualities, he writes “Love never fails” (1 Corinthians 13:8). We have fewer and fewer examples of this kind of enduring love in our world today. So we may not be able to fully comprehend God who will never leave us or forsake us. God will never love you more than He does today and He’ll never love you less. Read Romans 8:37-39 to remember than nothing can separate us from the love of God that is found in Jesus!
YOU ARE LOVED
In her memoir, The Whisper Test, Mary Ann Bird recounts the beautiful story of her path to life transformation. She writes,
I grew up knowing I was different, and I hated it. I was born with a cleft palate, and when I started school, my classmates made it clear to me how I looked to others: a little girl with a misshapen lip, crooked nose, lopsided teeth, and garbled speech. When schoolmates asked, "What happened to your lip?" I'd tell them I'd fallen and cut it on a piece of glass. Somehow it seemed more acceptable to have suffered an accident than to have been born different. I was convinced that no one outside my family could love me. There was, however, a teacher in the second grade whom we all adored. Her name was Mrs. Leonard. She was a short, round, happy, sparkling lady. Every year we had a hearing test. Mrs. Leonard gave the test to everyone in the class, and one year I went last. I knew from past years that as we stood against the door and covered one ear, the teacher sitting at her desk would whisper something, and we would have to repeat it back—things like "The sky is blue" or "Do you have new shoes?" I waited there and listened and heard words that God must have put into her mouth, seven words that changed my life. Mrs. Leonard said, in her whisper, "I wish you were my little girl."
Bird recalls how those seven simple words brought her out of her shell and restored her confidence. She was loved and that was enough. As misshapen as we are, God loves us. His great love isn’t mere sentimentality but personal and life-changing. The message of Christmas is this: Christ Was Love!