Season of Preparation Day Nine: God’s Steadfast Love

Oh give thanks to the Lord, for he is good; for his steadfast love endures forever! 1 Chronicles 16:34

Steadfast love . . .  by definition, this is a love that is firmly fixed in place and not subject to change. By example it is the life and death of Jesus Christ.

It would take an unshakeable love to bring the Holy Son of God down from the perfection of heaven to walk on the earth as a man. I think (though I hope to never find out!) that it might be easier to die for someone than  to suffer for them.

Jesus chose to do both.

And thirty-three years of walking through this broken world would have brought plenty of suffering. Jesus experienced hunger, exhaustion, nights that made him shiver and days that made him sweat when he came to the earth as a man.

And not just a man.

We think often of the sacrifice he made by his death on a cross. But I wonder if we’re missing the sacrificial nature of his birth. His journey to the cross started as an infant lying helpless in the very world he created.

That is not an act of impulsive or conditional love. That is a steadfast love. A love that endures forever and doesn’t depend on me to draw it out or earn it. If you’ve ever heard I hate you from your child, you understand how much it hurts. But you also know it doesn’t change your love for that child. A parent’s love for their child isn’t dependent on the child’s love for the parent.

And I can say from experience as a parent, when you hear those words the cry of your heart is “if you only knew how much I love you.” But the other thing I know from being a parent is that you can’t fully grasp the power of a parent’s love for their child until you become a parent.

Thus, we can’t expect to fully understand God’s love for us because we’ll never be God. Still, he surrounds with the evidence of his love in countless ways every day. Sunrises, laughter, music. The smell of rain and the taste of coffee. The smile of a stranger and the hug of a friend.

The birth of baby on a cold, star-filled winter night.

This Christmas I want to look at the  lowly manger and see the steadfast love of God Who surrendered all to rescue me.