Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 25-Wed, Dec 22
But as for me, my prayer is to you, O Lord. At an acceptable time, O God, in the abundance of your steadfast love, answer me. — Psalm 69:13
… for you are all children of light and children of the day. — 1 Thessalonians 5:4-5
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One of the Advent candles is especially short, as it has burned longest: hope. Peace and joy stagger upward in height, next to the tallest and youngest flame: love.
As you draw closer to the celebration of holy love’s arrival within your life, as it will be observed on Christmas Day, reflect on how your experience of love has already shaped you. Who in your early life offered models of love? What forms did that love take?
Often you see holiness—God—through the lens of the primary relationships from your childhood. This developmental concept of holy authority and presence doesn’t imply there’s a correct or wrong way to relate to God; it simply acknowledges that your lived experience informs the way you connect to God.
Is your relationship with holy love one that is intimate or distant? Is Godself, to you, a faraway deity who observes, but doesn’t get involved? Or is your connection to God one of friendship and immediacy? Do you find God in nature or through action and volunteering? Is God an abstraction or a vivid, tangible presence?
How is love expressed in your life? What face does it wear? What language does it use to reach you? How does it illuminate your life?
Love’s flame flickers along with the others. Let it dance within you, revealing what is holy within you, as it illuminates what is sacred in other people, too. — Rev Gail
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Love is not really an action that you do. Love is what and who you are, in your deepest essence. Love is a place that already exists inside of you, but is also greater than you. That’s the paradox. It’s within you and yet beyond you … Your True Self, God’s Love in you, cannot be exhausted. — Richard Rohr
Nothing can dim the light that shines from within. — Maya Angelou
Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 24-Tue, Dec 21
‘… 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. — Mark 12:30-31
The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it. — John 1:5
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The flame of a candle is modest and manageable by comparison to the burning tempest of a forest fire or the impossible mass and gravity of the sun. You kindle four small flames that, if supervised, provide light and warmth. They do not, unless neglected, threaten destruction. Rather they add comfort, brightness, and ambience: they change the environment in meaningful, positive ways.
Love also has other expressions. It can involve partners with whom you achieve eros: passionate love. Over time, it is also found as a more mature love that endures through long-term relationships, and is called pragma.
As one commentator explained, “Unlike the other types of love, pragma is the result of effort on both sides. It’s the love between people who’ve learned to make compromises, have demonstrated patience and tolerance to make the relationship work.” These forms of love, both the passionate and spicy eros and the seasoned and abiding pragma, hold significance in the spectrum of human experiences of love, all of which echo the greatest love: agape.
Is the light kindled within you this Advent season new and passionate or mature and familiar? — Rev Gail
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We are shaped and fashioned by those we love. — Goethe
If light is in your heart, you will find your way home. – Rumi
Advent Daily Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 23-Mon, Dec 20
As the Father has loved me, so I have loved you; abide in my love. — John 15:9
All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. — John 1:3-4
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Lights spring into being, one after the other, because you ignite them. Each feeds the neighboring candle. Each flame take life from the lit before it and contains a spark of its antecedents.
Similarly, every form of love reflects some aspect of the greatest love: agape. Take friendship, for instance, which can also denote kinship. It has been called storge or filios.
In these days, you have reason to cherish friendship more than ever. The past eighteen months made people aware of how precious relationships have become.
Friendships endure. Grow and change. Expect much from you and yet allows for your mistakes and mishaps as you who try to get it right, but sometimes get it wrong. Friends are sometimes as close as family: they may even become the kindred you choose, as opposed to the families into which you are born.
Friendship fulfills part of the Gospel commandment to love your neighbors as yourself. When you look at people as friends, they stop seeming ‘other’ and become someone with whom you share respect and recognition.
Can you feel the heat from the four candles, which leap and flicker together, lean toward each other and spring apart, dancing, moving? Everything they touch is lovingly revealed and rendered by such intimate light. — Rev Gail
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Being deeply loved by someone gives you strength, while loving someone deeply gives you courage. — Lao Tzu
I will love the light for it shows me the way. – Og Mandino
Dec 19 Advent 4: Love Worship
Daily Advent Devotional: WEEK of LOVE
When we love another heart
And allow it to love us,
We journey deep below time
Into that eternal weave
Where nothing unravels …
- John O’Donohue (excerpt)
Daily Advent Devotional: WEEK of LOVE: Day 22- Sun, Dec 19
I give you a new commandment, that you love one another.
Just as I have loved you, you also should love one another.
— John 13:34
In the same way, let your light shine before others.
— Matthew 5:16
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Love glows bright as the focus of this week’s reflections. As you light four candles, prepare to welcome holy love into your home and life.
Can you imagine a love more determined than the one that chooses to show up in our messy and imperfect world? To be born human?
It takes a stubborn love to move toward us, because we cannot ever quite reach that love itself. That is what our holy stories translate to us. Love chooses to be with us and among us in this season. And every day.
The holy love narrated in our scriptures points toward agape. Agape is a love greater than ourselves. It is different than erotic or passionate love, larger and deeper than love for friends or family.
Agape gives of itself. And part of that giving begins with movement. Holy love has turned to us and returned to us, chosen us over and over, meeting us where we are, coming to this world and time in which we live. Love shines out as the final light of Advent: until the arrival of the Christ light. — Rev Gail
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When I say it’s you I like, I’m talking about that part of you that knows that life is far more than anything you can ever see or hear or touch. That deep part of you that allows you to stand for those things without which humankind cannot survive. Love that conquers hate, peace that rises triumphant over war, and justice that proves more powerful than greed. ― Fred Rogers
When you possess light within, you see it externally. – Anais Nin