When my children were young, my son Michael had a bad habit of shaking presents. We wrapped and placed unlabeled gifts under the tree well before Christmas morning. One day, he shook a gift, and it rattled. “Now you’ve done it; I bet that is in 500 pieces.” He was sure that he had broken something. Good.
On Christmas morning, he unwrapped that gift, and it was a box of 500 Lego pieces. “You said I broke it!” He complained. “No, I said it was in 500 pieces, which it was.” He got the message, and that bad habit of shaking gifts was broken, at least when someone was around to notice.
Today’s advent theme reminds me of that gift of Legos. Love is the central theme of the Gospel of Jesus Christ. Jesus explained, “For this is how God loved the world: He gave his one and only Son, so that everyone who believes in him will not perish but have eternal life. God sent his Son into the world not to judge the world, but to save the world through him.” (John 3:16–17, NLT) Jesus is God’s gift of love to us, to you, to me, and all those near, dear, distant, and unknown.
Love is the gift, but there are well over 500 different expressions of love in that gift. Christ’s sacrifice is the pinnacle expression. Forgiveness is another. Grace, mercy, joy, peace, hope, goodness, kindness, patience, and keeping a long fuse are also expressions of love. Works of compassion, words of kindness, a smile, humility, charity, welcome, and hospitality are physical expressions of love. Sometimes, love is saying the hard thing to someone on a dangerous path. Sometimes, love is letting them discover a hard lesson for themselves. Love is always seeking the best for others. This is just the tip of the iceberg. Paul gave a longer list in 1 Corinthians 13, but even that doesn’t cover everything.
And like Legos, these expressions of love can be combined with others to create something unique. That’s the fun of Legos; that’s the joy of love. But to truly give love, we must first receive God’s love. And as we give that love to others, Jesus pours even more into our hearts.
Jesus said, “Give, and you will receive. Your gift will return to you in full—pressed down, shaken together to make room for more, running over, and poured into your lap. The amount you give will determine the amount you get back.” (Luke 6:38, NLT) Some falsely say that this is about money, but it’s not. The context is love, mercy, and forgiveness. The more you give of these things, the more the Father pours into your lap.
This Christmas, give a gift of love to someone else. I don’t know what or to whom. Pray about it. I’m confident that God will show you, just like he showed the Magi, where to bring their gifts. We should, however, share these gifts all year long, the beauty of Christmas is its annual reminder to do so.
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