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.
John 3:16-17
Weekly Readings
God of love, how great and patient You are. We did nothing to earn Your love, yet You freely gave it.
Humble us, so that we may accept Your love and respond reciprocally. We desire to deny ourselves, so that our love for You may truly be complete.
Help us, so that we may rid our lives of the things that displease You. Enable us to love You and others with the same self-giving You exhibited.
Move of us from those who observe Your love to those who participate in it. We ask that Your Spirit accomplish through us the reconciliation You desire for all people.
Amen.
Weekly Reflection
“If God is Love, He is, by definition, something more than mere kindness… He has paid us the intolerable compliment of loving us, in the deepest, most tragic, most inexorable sense… When we fall in love with a woman, do we cease to care whether she is clean or dirty, fair or foul? Do we not rather, then, first begin to care?
In awful and surprising ways, we are the objects of His love. You asked for a loving God: you have one… not a senile benevolence that drowsily wishes you to be happy in your own way, not the cold philanthropy of a conscientious magistrate… but the consign fire Himself, the Love that made the worlds, persistent as the artist’s love for his work… provident and venerable as a father’s love for a child, jealous, inexorable, exacting, as love between the sexes. How this should be, I do not know: it passes reason to explain why any creatures, not to say creatures such as we, should have a value so prodigious in their Creator’s eyes. It is certainly a burden of glory not only beyond our deserts but also, except in rare moments of grace, beyond our desiring.”
-C.S. Lewis, The Problem of Pain p. 29; 34-35
Conversation
When has someone shown God’s love to you?
Who do you know that needs some extra love during this season?
Have you ever felt restrained and unable to love?
Why is it sometimes hard to love other people?
What is different between God’s love and the world’s love?
Community
Gather all the Christmas cards that your family has received. Spread them out on a table or counter, and take turns praying for each individual or family represented. Ask God to bless them in their specific situations and life seasons. Pray for God’s love to be present in each life and each household through this season.
Craft • Nativity Scene
MATERIALS
- Nativity Scene pieces
- Bible
DIRECTIONS
Read the story of Jesus’ birth from the Bible and put the pieces/characters on as they appear in the story.
Use this week to set up a nativity scene in your home. Usually, a nativity scene consists of figurines depicting baby Jesus, Mary, Joseph, the shepherds, three Wise Men (also called Magi), an angel, and some animals on the night of Jesus’ birth. The purpose of the nativity scene is to remember the humble coming of God’s freedom to earth and the amazing joy that surrounded His birth. If you don’t have a nativity scene for your family, this is a great time to buy or even make your own. Just like the Advent Wreath, there is no “right” way to set up your nativity scene. You could cut out the figurines from construction paper or felt. You could even use LEGOs and Barbies, as long as your children understand what those figurines are representing!
But this year, don’t put Jesus in the scene just yet. Wait until Christmas morning to put Him in the manger. As you are setting the scene without Jesus, take the opportunity to talk with your family about what all the other people in the scene were anticipating at this time. What was Mary thinking and feeling? What about Joseph? What about the shepherds, who had been waiting for the freedom of God’s Messiah for hundreds of years? Do you think God gave the animals any special inclination that something so loving was about to happen in their stable?