Tonight Kathy & I attended the Christmas Eve service at First United Methodist Church. It began with joyful Christmas carols and included communion recognizing Jesus’ death and the ultimate extent of God’s love. This is the great contribution of Christianity regarding the full dominion of love—love inherently entails joy and at the same time sacrificial living without measure. Christians do not count themselves worthy by keeping track of their good deeds, but are worthy rather by the grace and love of God which is open to everyone. Self-centeredly keeping score on one’s sacrifices is counter to the nature of love—it flies in the face of love to even contemplate doing such a thing. Love is our response to God’s love—who first loved us. We want to bless for we were first blessed. There is a saying: payback is hell. This is not true in the case of our response to God’s love. Payback then is the only route to happiness and freedom.
Print Page
