Advent Daily Devotional (Day 27)
Thursday, Dec 24 – DAY 27
On the eve of holy love’s renewed arrival in the world, we prepare ourselves. How do you get ready to welcome love at the door of your heart? To answer when it knocks on the threshold of your life?
Perhaps simply by listening. Waiting. And setting aside any sense that you can do enough, or be enough, to earn such love and grace.
Ideally, you have chosen an ethical path. Optimally, you have lived out what you believe. And yet …
And yet, as humans, we always fall short. Can you ever deserve holy love’s presence? Not really. It’s a gift.
Part of the gift of grace is that holy love simply shows up. Even when it’s not reasonable. Not rational. Even when we cannot possibly deserve it or earn it.
Amazingly, love chooses us, in spite of ourselves, simply because we are beloved children of God. This holy love accepts us and embraces us, just as we are. At the same time, this love believes in all we might yet become.
Are you ready? Probably not. Yet love is coming anyway. — Rev Gail
… It was no messenger or angel but his presence that saved them; in his love and in his pity he redeemed them; he lifted them up and carried them all the days of old. — Isaiah 63:9
… you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart, and with all your soul, and with all your mind, and with all your strength.’ The second is this, ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these. — Mark 12:30-31
For this reason, the Father loves me, because I lay down my life in order to take it up again. — John 10:17
Agape is what some call spiritual love. It is an unconditional love, bigger than ourselves, a boundless compassion, an infinite empathy. It is what the Buddhists describe as “mettā” or “universal loving kindness.” It is the purest form of love that is free from desires and expectations, and loves regardless of the flaws and shortcomings of others. Agape is the love that is felt for that which we intuitively know as the divine truth: the love that accepts, forgives and believes for our greater good. — Mateo Sol