Sharing His Love this Holiday Season

Ready or not, we are right around the corner from holiday celebrations. The Christmas lights have started to go up all around town, perhaps in your neighborhood too.

I know Thanksgiving, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve can bring special traditions, family visits, but also stress or a sense of loss. This year, some of you will be celebrating with an empty chair at the Thanksgiving table. Others may be pulling up a high chair for a baby born. Some had relationship breaks so you may be alone. Whatever the circumstances in your life, I’m grateful for the consistent church family we call Mariners’.

The coming season of Advent is full of special services, prayers, and times to serve others. Like every family, at Mariners’ we love each other imperfectly. However, opportunities to be together, worshipping our perfect Triune God, help us grow in loving one another despite our differences.

The Lord set the example for us to follow, and the Incarnation is a clear expression of His love. A love that didn’t stop in coming to “be with us”, but went all the way to the cross to make possible the renewal of all things, especially all peoples. Thanks to Jesus, we can be empowered by the Spirit to fully receive His love, be transformed by it, so we can extend it to others  – regardless of background, skin color, socio-economic status, or any other social construct that is meant to divide us.

In Philippians, Paul encourages us to “Do nothing from selfish ambition or conceit, but in humility count others more significant than yourselves. Let each of you look not only to his own interests, but also to the interests of others.”

Philippians 2:3-4 ESV

This seems like an impossible command if we focus on our limitations. We are all so often self-focused. Paul continues to teach us, in Philippians, that we need to turn our gaze to Jesus. It is in Him that we find the freedom and power to love others well. The love of God is not an “it” as some sort of feeling or commodity we can get and go our way. God is LOVE! Love is a person – God Himself.

“Have this mind among yourselves, which is yours in Christ Jesus, who, though he was in the form of God, did not count equality with God a thing to be grasped, but emptied himself, by taking the form of a servant, being born in the likeness of men.”

Philippians 2:5-7 ESV

Typically those who have achieved much in this world don’t want to go anywhere but up. We tend to be socially conscious, career driven, and sensitive to appearances. We may view a culture as below ours, which has its roots in racism or classism. This was not the attitude of Jesus, and this is not what we are called to as followers of Jesus. As we grow in our relationship with Jesus, let’s remember we not only have His example, we have his power. That’s how we are capable of growing in LOVE.

This Holiday season I challenge you, through the power of Christ IN YOU,  to look around and find someone, perhaps someone you typically wouldn’t engage or speak to. Get to know them and learn from them. It may be a neighbor you haven’t spoken to in a while; it may be someone at the church social hour, or maybe in your own family.

If for some reason you are not able to be with someone, maybe you can reach out through a random act of kindness. Maybe with a handwritten note or in some other way God may put in your heart.

I also want us to continue to reflect His love as people come through our doors during this season. Whether it may be someone visiting our city or looking for a community, our prayer is that they will feel the love of God through each of us.

Join us in prayer, and ask God to lead us all with boldness and selflessness. May we be attentive to the ways the Holy Spirit leads us, so we may love Him with our whole hearts. And, may we honor and glorify His name by loving others in the way we are loved by Him.

Blessings and peace,

Rev Todd and Dr. Christiane