and posted in Explore
As a culture we do not know how to love very well.
We associate love with a romantic feeling that we can fall in and out of almost at whim.
We base love on performance and success, popularity, wealth and lust.
We are selfish lovers who demonstrate love only when it suits us.
Worse of all, we wrap up love in fear and intimidation, abuse and manipulation, "If you love me, you'll do this for me..."
So when God says he loves us unconditionally and with an unending love, we are sceptical about what he means.
What kind of love does he mean?
God demonstrates his love for us by giving us his only Son, Jesus. Of all the ways God could have chosen, this is the most surprising...
Jesus, divinity-in-the-flesh, entered our world as a tiny foetus inside a woman's womb. There he stayed for nine months before he was born to a 14 year old girl and her poor fiancé. On these two people Jesus depended upon for his every need (food, cleaning and warmth). He was born in a stable amongst farm animals and the only people that acknowledged his birth were some shepherds who were marginalised by their society and by a group of foreign astronomers who couldn't speak his parent's language. Soon after his birth, Jesus' parents were forced to flee for their lives and seek asylum in a neighbouring country for many years.
God chose this risk-filled route as his starting point so that his love may be revealed without power, coercion or strength and displayed instead within vulnerability, service and weakness.
This is the God who we want to introduce you to.
