TAKE HOLD OF LOVE

DEVOTIONAL:

I was working feverishly on my Christmas sermon — the hardest time in any minister’s year to find something fresh to say — when the floor mother appeared at the study door. Another crisis upstairs.

Christmas Eve is a difficult day for the emotionally disturbed children in our church home. Three-quarters of them go home at least overnight, and the ones who remain react to the empty beds and the changed routine.

I followed her up the stairs, chafing inwardly at the repeated interruptions. This time it was Tommy. He had crawled under a bed and refused to come out. The woman pointed to one of six cots in the small dormitory.

Not a hair or a toe showed beneath, so I addressed myself to the cowboys and bucking broncos on the bedspread. I talked about the brightly lighted tree in the church vestibule next door and the packages underneath it and all the other good things waiting for him out beyond that bed.

No answer.

Still fretting at the time this was costing, I dropped to my hands and knees and lifted the spread. Two enormous blue eyes met mine. Tommy was eight, but looked like a five-year-old. It would have been no effort at all simply to pull him out.

But it wasn’t pulling Tommy needed — it was trust and a sense of deciding things on his own initiative. So, crouched there on all fours, I launched into the menu of the special Christmas Eve supper to be offered after the service. I told him about the stocking with his name on it provided by the women’s society.

Silence. There was no indication that he either heard me or cared about Christmas.

And at last, because I could think of no other way to make contact, I got down on my stomach and wriggled in beside him, bedsprings snagging my suit jacket. For what seemed a long time I lay there with my cheek pressed against the floor.

At first I talked about the big wreath above the altar and the candles in the windows. I reminded him of the carol he and the other children were going to sing. then I ran out of things to say and simply waited there beside him.

And as I waited, a small, chilled hand crept into mine.

“You know, Tommy,” I said after a bit, “it’s kind of close quarters under here. Let’s you and me go out where we can stand up.”

And so we did, but slowly, in no hurry. All the pressures had gone from my day, because, you see, I had my Christmas sermon. Flattened there on the floor I realized I had been given a new glimpse of the mystery of this season.

Hadn’t God called us, too, as I’d called Tommy, from far above us? With His stars and mountains, His whole majestic creation, hadn’t He pleaded with us to love Him, to enjoy the universe He gave us?

And when we would not listen, He had drawn closer. Through prophets and lawgivers and holy men, He spoke with us face to face.

But it was not until that first Christmas, until God stooped to earth itself, until He took our very place and came to dwell with us in our loneliness and alienation, that we, like Tommy, dared to stretch out our hands to take hold of love.

Isn’t it just like God, in all of His love for us, to come down here, far from His throne in heaven, to meet with us. To connect with us. To have relationship with us. To give us Hope and a future! He doesn’t want to be some aloof God, but a God who is with us! Emmanuel - God With Us! He has done everything possible within His power to make that happen without violating our free will! He gives you and me a choice! That’s what

John 3:16-18 tells us.

It says . . .

John 3:16–18 NIV84

“For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him. Whoever believes in him is not condemned, but whoever does not believe stands condemned already because he has not believed in the name of God’s one and only Son.

As always we’ve needed a Savior. Jesus is the only one that can save us! As always we’ve needed Hope and Peace, Joy and Comfort . . . and that hasn’t changed in our world today . . . maybe it just seems a little more real and a little more tangible today. Jesus, is the only one that can give us true Hope and Peace. Jesus is the only one who can give us true Joy and Comfort.

Thinking on these things, as we close, would you all join us in singing our last song of the night, Silent Night!