Advent Reflections
Endless Love
by Peter Van Peborgh
December 8 – AM Psalm 25; PM Psalm 9, 15; Isaiah 5:8-12,18-23; 1 Thessalonians 5:1-11; Luke 21:20-28
Because I have become increasingly convinced in recent times that love is central to the Christian life, I could not resist presenting you here with Paul’s passionate commendation of it in 1 Corinthians 13! Read it in several translations and paraphrases to get a three-dimensional picture of the passage.
Paul first reminds us that without love, all we do in God’s name is useless. However arguably good, glamorous or ‘spiritual’…
Then he describes in very down-to-earth terms how love behaves. An ideal we cannot attain without God’s help… But should endlessly pursue!
Finally he tells us why love surpasses faith and hope:
God is love. Love runs through all eternity and therefore also time.
Faith and hope are for this temporary season when we can know God at best in a shadowy way, seeing Him in an imperfect mirror of eternal reality.
We don’t know the half of it! But this He has told us: Our mission is to increase the Kingdom of God, the kingdom of his love.
From eternity God loves.
Christmas: Jesus came to help us see this in someone like us.
As a result of this, love should run through us as citizens of God’s Kingdom while we live in faith and hope.
And Jesus said we would be known as His people by our love…
