Advent: Love

“In the Bleak Midwinter,” rendition by Julia Bloom

“In the bleak mid-winter
Frosty wind made moan
The earth stood hard as iron
Water like a stone
How snow had fallen
Snow on snow on snow

In the bleak mid-winter
Long, long ago
What can I give him

Poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb
And if I were a wise man, Oh I would do my part
what can I give him? I would give my heart.”

~Christina Rossetti~

Christina Rossetti’s poem set to music is among my favorite songs of the season. It beckons my cynical streaks and melancholic “frosty” moans to lean into the strands of song that lift my gaze to my Creator. When my heart has grown hard—water like stone—with life’s busyness and struggles, I can intellectually assent and acknowledge that He receives even a hard heart layered by encrusted “snow on snow on snow,” just as the iron-clad earth softens in spring rains. After a season of winter snows melt into the cracks and crevices, I find He has softened it, and by and by have I discovered myself in a season of spring.

The final candle that is lit in our season of Advent is the Angel’s Candle, representing the message of God’s love:

“Glory to God in the highest heaven,
And on earth peace to those on whom his favor rests.”
~Luke 2:14~

And to whom was this message first delivered? To the low-class shepherds, the outcasts of society, who smelled and lived among the sheep dung. A cultural paradox: love bestowed on the unloved of society.

Paradox was also wrapped in swaddling clothes:  presenting the power struggle of my humanity before a muck-encrusted manger and setting my expectations on Jesus embodied as a baby. What, after all, can a baby do for me, when experience teaches me that I must do everything for my baby?

Paradox, indeed. Love swaddled in seeming helplessness, which is the metaphorical condition of our hearts. We are all wrapped, each of us, in our own soiled swaddle, trying to keep the icky places of our heart from spilling out.

The ultimate response of God to our own muck-infested world is love; not a wishy-washy, on-and-off kind of love, but an agape love that is committed. This is the embodiment of John 3:16, come in the flesh in the manger:

“For God so loved (selflessly, sacrificially, unconditionally)
the world that He gave His one and only son,
 that whoever believes in Him would not perish
but have eternal life.”

How do we respond to this kind of love? What can we possibly give back to Him? Perhaps the answer is found in 1 John 4:19:

“We love because He first loved us.”

It feels natural to love a baby wrapped in swaddling clothes, but unnatural as we try to comprehend the source of God’s love toward a humanity that comes soiled in willful sin. It isn’t natural:  it is supernatural! But we respond by giving Him our hearts, hearts that have been pummeled by grief and sadness, hurt and rejection, that can be rendered back to Him, who sutures the gaping wounds, binding them up. He sees the hurts that my heart still holds, the confusion that circumstances left me feeling, but I can give it to Him again, and again, and again, until I see that He has taken me to a place where there has been closure, because of His love. God has given us the greatest gift, and all I have to give back is my heart.

“And it shall often happen that when thy heart is numb and torpid…
it shall begin to thaw, and at last burst,
like streams under the breath of spring, from their icy prison,
with the warm and genial exercise of praise.”
~Edward M. Goulburn~

“I pray…that you, being rooted and established in love,
may have power…
to grasp how wide and long and high and deep
is the love of Christ.”
~Ephesians 3: 17-18~