Third Sunday of Advent: Love (in the Kingdom)




L-O-V-E. It feels redundant to write yet another musing on the topic, for two reasons:
It’s been done—A LOT—and I just wrote a book about it. Love is (SPOILER ALERT) the essence of the Kingdom of Heaven, God’s Way.

As we observe the various political aspirations in our world, they all have something in common: they seek control, empire, power. By contrast—in an act that could be woefully mistaken for weakness—God's Way chooses to lovingly serve. Love is the secret weapon of God’s Kingdom—a weapon forged to restore rather than to conquer.

"When the power of love overcomes the love of power, the world will know peace."
—Jimi Hendrix

Jesus' arrival as a middle-class infant also took the world by surprise. From the beginning, the local King Herod assumed his throne was under threat upon hearing the news from the Magi that a new king had been born. Later, John the Baptist and even Jesus' own disciples would be confused about why he wasn't more militant if he truly was their promised Messiah. We all have preconditioned ideas of what power looks like, but there is no force more powerful in the world than love.

Jesus didn't come to simply be another king; he came to be a better king, by showing us a better way—a loophole in the political spectrum: love. He is called the King of all kings, so his Kingdom is the most excellent way!

By this very Way, God sent Jesus—God's only Son—to us in the first place. In a future post I plan to gather some thoughts about the extreme degree of love experienced in a parent-to-child relationship. For now, let's take comfort and inspiration from the declaration that God loved his creation so much that he sent us his only Son, so we could taste restoration.

Now that's service.

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