"God's Great 'Love Letter' to Us: The Tender Romance of Christmas"

 

     Christmas is God’s great heavenly romance come-to-earth.  (Today we build upon the theme of God’s tender romance that we saw in Martin Luther’s thought, etc. in our last post.[1])  

     God’s great Love Letter to us is seen in the Christmas events.  It is Christ come-to-earth: the very incarnated God come-to-us and also into our fragile, vulnerable flesh.  In Christ, God chooses to be intimately close to us.  God enters our dusty, mundane, sometimes cruel existence to bring a heavenly romance as near as possible to us.  Some of the early masters showed the fragile, tender vulnerability of God’s loving entrance into our world in their artwork of the Nativity.  One can look, for example, at Hugo van der Goes’s Nativity masterpiece, in which Jesus is a thin, naked babe lying starkly on the ground upon nothing but a bit of earthy straw. (See a link in Note.[2])

     Let’s expand upon the idea of Jesus being God’s great Love Letter to us.  In the Gospel of John, Jesus is called the Word—the “with us” Word of God.  (“With us” comes from another name for Jesus: “Emmanuel”—God with us.)

     In essence, Christmas is about an entrance—the entrance of God into our world.  In discussion of the Gospel of John, Larry Crabb offers this title for Christ’s coming: “HEAVEN’S REALITY HAS MOVED INTO YOURS.”[3]  Crab describes each and every book of the Bible as a unique love letter from God.  And one major theme of the Love Letter the Gospel of John offers is that now God’s Love Letter to us comes in the form of flesh and blood: indeed, “HEAVEN’S REALITY HAS MOVED INTO YOURS.” “And the Word [Christ] became flesh and dwelt among us, full of grace and truth …”; John 1:14, RSV.

     Yet how hiddenly, tenderly, and vulnerably he moves into our

world.  It will take Jesus’ whole life on earth to proclaim the great

heavenly romance of God’s unending love for us--arriving hidden

in this Babe.   Moreover, the great heavenly romance we are invited

into is a living Love Letter and a romance that will never end--that

will never leave us or let us down.  Before Jesus left this earth he

said: “And surely I am with you always, to the very end of the

age”; Mt. 28:20, NIV.  He is always present tense for us--

intimately present tense. 

This ONE of God’s great Love Letter is always here.  This

ONE of God’s great Love Letter waits to comfort, help, revivify,

restore, release us from darkness, forgive us, and grant us the joy

and peace of knowing SUCH LOVE.  (Martin Luther says we

should pray to know this in an experiential way: “Ask God to

work faith in you. . .”[4])

     All of the wonders above began on a night beneath the stars with one special star enlightening the scene:  

How silently, how silently,

the wondrous gift is given;

so God imparts to human hearts

the blessings of his heaven. . . . 

[O] come to us, abide with us,

our Lord Emmanuel! [5] 

For further thoughts about the "Great 'Divine Romance of

Heaven' For Us," see an earlier post.[6] 

We close with personal reflections/meditations upon our theme

and the Season:

                                                                                                                                                         

“The Completed Circle (a Meditation)”

(“Don’t you believe that God is at the same time on the cross

and in the virgin Mary’s womb?” - Martin Luther [8] )

“Meditations Upon a Snowy Christmas-tide Morn”

 

 

***

From my journal:

The great strains of a Corelli piece are playing . . . It is Christmas day-- [9]

a cold Christmas . . . cold but blessedly white . . . and the house is merry

and warm.

The Baby sleeps in the manger . . . so near me in the crèche. . . . The same

Babe sleeps and wakes in my heart . . . "abides" as He once promised.

                                                                                                           

And I've lived with that abiding . . . and want to tell my secret . . . oh,

it's good . . . It is very good!!                                                                                

                                                                                                              

    (With reflection upon Jn. 15:4; Mt. 28:20; Lk. 2:1-20; Eph. 3:18-19,

NRSV, NRSVCE.)

“LOVE-CAME-DOWN (meditation upon a Christmas morn)”

                                                                                                                                                                   

        (With reflection upon Lk. 2, Gen. 2:22-23, and Christina Rossetti's

wonderful poem “Love Came Down at Christmas.") 

                                                                                                            

An opening to prayer/meditation (sometimes the Lord

of the Incarnation seems to whisper): 

     (Quoting Julian of Norwich’s famous assurance.[10]

Also note Mt. 11:28.)

“Visions of the ‘Incarnation” 

Who am I?

I am someone who is Loved!

  I am someone for whom the universe   ⌀ ◑ ❂ 

was ✯ marvelously made—

someone for whom ‘LOVE-Came-Down’

in slow but willing steps 

to give His joy, His heart, His ALL. 

And He would do it again 

TODAY ✧✧✧  for me

 if necessity should be.

I am someone who is Loved 

if I never lift a thought to love and serve in return

(as the tiny babe is thus loved).

Yet even if I give my life for Him,

I am Loved so much already

          that it could not add one pebble

to His already unending Love.  

His Love for me begins in the

untraceable origins of time  ✫ ☽ ♢               

✧ ◑ ❂  and lasts to ✧✧✧  beyond Infinity.

That is who I am.  It is enough!

It will stretch my comprehension all my life.

I am someone who is L♡ VED!

Julian of Norwich speaks of everything having “being through”

God’s “most wonderful deep love,” which “knew and loved us

afore any time” in “marvellous and deep charity.”[11]

Meditating upon (quoting) John 1:14 (AMPC):

And because this holy season is also meant to be a time for

generosity, charity, & special love for those in need (as Mary,

Joseph, and Jesus were on that Night):

🔔 “Meditating upon the Homeless Christ Child on a Snowy 

Christmas Night” 

Where would the BABY’s dear head be laid 

    If He came once again this Dark Night?  🌌

Off some ❆ snowy ❅ street?  In an alley nook?                            

   🎆 Amid shadows and stark city lights?                          

We’re told He was “homeless” that ⭐ Ancient Night! ✫

   Could He be “homeless” ONCE MORE?                                   

‘No place for his head’--see these people the same!

   And see how they ROAM past my door.

      (With reflection upon Lk. 9:58; Mt. 2: 13-23, 25:40; Lk. 2:7.)

     “This is my personal opinion, but I do believe we are creating,

little by little, a Charles Dicken's world [of forgotten persons] in

America.  It need not be.  Let us seek to make room in our

hearts … for Him in them this Christmastide, and help to turn it

around for Christ's dear sake.” - Rev. Robert H. Crilley.[12]

(See additional blog posts after the “Notes” in Newer/Older Posts,

including more Christmas posts.[13])

.....................................

Notes:

1. “Martin Luther, the Reformation & God’s Tender Romance (Inclusion or Neglect?),”

Oct. 3, 2017;http://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2017/10/.

2. Hugo van der Goes’s "Nativity," Portinari altarpiece, c. 1475; click

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portinari_Altarpiece#/media/File:Hugo_van_der_Goes_004.jpg

3. Dr. Larry Crabb, 66 Love Letters (Nashville: Thomas Nelson, 2009), p. 223.

4. Martin Luther “An Introduction to St. Paul’s Letter to the Romans,” Luther’s

German Bible of 1522, trans. Robert E. Smith from Dr. Martin Luther’s Vermischte

Deutsche Schriften, ed. Johann K. Irmischer (Erlangen: Heyder and Zimmer, 1854),

63:124-125.

5. Phillips Brooks, “O Little Town of Bethlehem.”

6. See “The ‘Great Divine Romance of Heaven’ for us & its Frequent Neglect”;

https://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/07/the-great-sacred-romance-and-its.html

7. Meditations, prayer/poetry/proverbs and journaling by Lorraine B. Eshleman.

8. Quoted in Bengt R. Hoffman, Luther and the Mystics (Minneapolis: Augsburg,

1976), pp. 142-143.

9. Arcangelo Corelli, Christmas Concerto Grosso in G minor, Op. 6, No. 8.

10. Julian of Norwich, Revelations of Divine Love, ed. Grace Warrack (London:
Methuen & Co. Ltd., 1901, 1949), pp. 159, 64-65, 170 (Chap. 63, 32, 68;

Long Text). 

11. Ibid., a combination of the above,  p. 148 (Chap. 59); and 

Julian of Norwich: Showings, trans. Edmund Colledge, O.S.A. and James 

Walsh, S.J. (New York: Paulist Press, 1978), p. 296 (Chap. 59), Long Text. 

12. Rev. Robert H. Crilley, "The Homeless Christ," Rejoice, Presbytery of

Detroit, Dec., 1988.

13. For other Christmas posts, see https://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2015/12/the-descent-of-tender-love-christmas.html; https://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2016/12/the-tender-romance-of-gods-love.html;

https://sacred-tenderness-christian-tradition.blogspot.com/2018/12/why-christmas-why-christ.html