Love is His meaning

A school teacher once asked her class what was special about Christmas and a little child shot up a hand.   “Jesus has the birthday and we get the presents”.    Very perceptive – or was it simply hopeful! 
It is also a profound truth because that is what happens.  

At the heart of Christmas is a Gift and the present above all other presents that we receive is Love.  The whole meaning of Christmas is summed up in that one gift.  In the birth of Jesus right through to his glorious Ascension, God is giving us a living testimony of how much He loves is.  

The 14th century English mystic, Julian of Norwich was given a number of visions of the love of God.  She meditated on these in the quietness of her cell and she left the world the fruit of these meditations in her book Revelations of Divine Love.     At the very end of the book she deals with the questions of what our Lord’s meaning is – what his purpose is towards us – and she comes up with the answer; “Love is His meaning”.     It is worth quoting her in full:

I had often wanted to know what was our Lord’s meaning.  It was more than fifteen years after that I was answered in my spirit’s understanding.  ‘You would know our Lord’s meaning in this thing?  Know it well.   Love is His meaning. Who showed it you?  Love.  What did he show you?  Love.  Why did He show it?  For Love.     Hold on to this and you will know and understand love more and more.  But you will not know or learn anything else – ever!’
So it was that I learned that love was our Lord’s meaning.  And I saw for certain, both here and elsewhere, that before ever He made us, God loved us; and that His love has never slackened, nor ever shall.  In this love all His works have been done, and in this love He has made everything serve us; and in this love our life is everlasting. Our beginning was when we were made, but the love in which He made us never had a beginning. In it we have our beginning.   All this we shall see in God for ever.  May Jesus grant us this.  Amen.  

Love was His meaning.  That message shines out from the crib as much as it was later to shine out from the cross.  It gives us the meaning and the purpose of God for us but it also shapes the purpose of our own lives.  

Christmas can be a time for sentimentality; for momentary truces in the battles we wage against each other for dominance, power or control. This is true between Nations but it can also be true in families. We can be filled with goodwill towards people for a time but it is often fragile. Real love, however, takes the hard road from Bethlehem to Calvary and never deviates.  Real love demands costly forgiveness, repentance, understanding, compassion and a bearing towards one another that imitates the love of Christ.    
Too often, as now, our world fails to show that love; too often, sadly, so do we.     Yet if we are to look towards the Bethlehem crib and understand its power and meaning, then only genuine Love will give it to us. As Christians we believe and experience God’s Love for us in Jesus Christ which awakens our love for Him and a sharing of that love with each other.   If that is lacking, the meaning of Christmas is lost and so are we.

[Mr G]

Your Love

Bless us with Love, O Merciful God;
That we may Love as you Love!
That we may show patience, tolerance,
Kindness, caring and love to all!
Give us knowledge; O giver of Knowledge,
That we may be one with our Universe and Mother Earth!
O Compassionate One, grant compassion unto us;
That we may help all fellow souls in need!
Bless us with your Love O God.
Bless us with your Love.

– Author Unknown