I wonder how we know we’re loved.

Is it an unearthly awareness we’re born with? Is that why a child can be picked up by a parent and stop crying in their arms without anything being said?

But what about when we get older? Is it possible, as adults, to innately know we are loved? Or do the scars and disappointments of life mar that sense so that we can never really know again, without some lingering sense of doubt?

What happens in between those infant years and the days of adult enlightenment that leads us to question? In observing many life stories, it’s usually something that breaks the fragile bonds of relationship and trusting, something that requires forgiveness. Often with other people, but always, fundamentally, with God.

What a sweet promise to ponder today. When we cry out to Him, God forgives. And when He forgives, no matter how small or large our offenses were, we are able to lift our eyes and catch a glimpse of His goodness and of His love.

Not just any love. But abounding love. Love without limits. Love that can’t be contained. Love that will certainly spill over to drench the disappointments and smooth the scars.

When we invite it to.

Speak to God honestly. And be loved lavishly.

Though I didn’t realize it until I was experiencing it, the embrace of a baby was what I needed most.

Last Sunday, I headed off to church, feeling like I often do on a Sunday morning: thankful for a chance to worship corporately…but also like I needed something I couldn’t specifically name.

Perhaps it was more rest, when the tiredness of the whole week often rises up to meet me on the weekends. Perhaps it was a personal reminder that I can somehow be known and loved simply as I am, a need that sometimes gets lost when I feel lost while attending an ever-growing congregation.

I attended a session with my small group, which was fine. They are dear to my heart, and we’re all growing together. Then we sang some songs and listened to a creatively-formatted sermon. That was also fine.

But the need, the longing was still there.

Stepping out into the foyer afterward, I noticed the family walking toward me and recognized baby Olivia and her mom and brother. (She is one of the little ones I sometimes care for during monthly volunteering in the nursery. But, while she is a good girl, she’s never been much of a cuddler or talker.)

Olivia turned in her mom’s loose embrace and made eye contact with me. Then, she immediately spread her arms and reached out to me. I was so surprised that I gasped. When her mom paused and said it was fine for me to take her, she came to me eagerly.

And she didn’t just passively wait to let me give her a flash of a hug. She draped herself against me, laid her head on my shoulder, and soaked up my embrace for at least a full minute. I leaned into her and turned my face to kiss her silky brown hair. And I murmured, “Oh, baby, thank you. I cannot tell you how much your love blesses me today.”

And in that moment, the need I didn’t know how to name, the need I didn’t know ran so deep, was met in a way.

And I was struck by how the love a baby gives is so guileless and heart-melting, there is nothing else quite like it on the face of the earth. Even if it comes from a child that is not our own, when a baby gives acceptance and trust from his or her heart, that little one gives a pure gift: love with no ulterior motives.

Some people say that God came as a baby so He could fly under the local king’s radar. Others say He came that way so we could find Him more relatable somehow.

Those things may be true. But I think Olivia’s gift taught me something more fundamental and precious. He came as a baby to show us, in human terms, the very essence of love, starting with the sweet, innocent trusting of infancy and continuing on until His life was laid down for us.

The purest love and the greatest love. Both in His embrace. Just what we each need the most.

Another week dawns, and it’s time to focus on joy. The shepherds’ joy, as tradition goes, to be exact.

Growing up with a minister for a father, I heard many observations and catchy statements offered about this virtue called joy. Among the most common were the acronym JOY standing for Jesus-Others-You (that is, one will never find true joy unless they put others first and themselves last) and the concept of happiness being something tied to flippant emotions but joy being tied to a steadier peace the sits deep in the heart through the storms of life.

But this year, I can’t escape the thought that those pithy ideas don’t go deep enough. There is something more magnificent to be found in the gift of the Babe – though our finite minds may only be able to grasp a glimpse or a fraction of that depth while we dwell on this earth, in this skin.

Perhaps that is because it is, essentially, something that goes far beyond the skin, both down into the soul of us and upward into the Spirit of God.

What if true joy has less to do with what we can feel and can describe and aim to work for – and has far more to do with the wonder of the mystery we cannot describe but that we hunger for? It is the unknown thing we crave when we are far from the Babe. And it is the thing we long to understand and experience more fully even when the Babe is near and in us. 

Because the true joy we sense on earth is like the appetizer of Heaven’s coming banquet. 

In that light, I think joy even more than hope – or perhaps in an inseparable combination with hope – is what keeps us going when there is no other logical reason for us to keep going. And it does so by overshadowing our fear with something greater.

The shepherds were nobodies, in the lowest class of workers in their culture. Then, suddenly, their hum-drum, lowly existence was interrupted by a tsunami of fear and awe. And then, they listened to a pair of commands sandwiched around a song and ran to see if the outrageously-ridiculous could defy everything known to actually be possible.

And when they saw it, they could do nothing else but spread the news and give glory to God.

May that same Spirit, that Babe, and that joy encapsulate our hearts today.

This week, according to the order of some Advent services, we celebrate peace.

Ironic, how non-peaceful the first Christmas was according to Scripture and history. Consider:

• An obsessed, paranoid, and cruel regional ruler stopping at nothing to protect his power.
• A larger empire mercilessly taxing even the poorest families within their realm.
• A young woman, and later her betrothed, sacrificing their reputations and risking their personal safety to fulfill a divine request their relatives and neighbors would doubt.
• A baby being born to a terrified, inexperienced mother in the middle of an overcrowded, unfamiliar town.
• A people longing continually (for centuries) to see their bitterness end and their freedom restored.

In light of all these and other non-peaceful factors, how can we celebrate peace when we think of what this season represents? Consider:

• A Father who painfully heard the cries of mourning mothers, and I would suggest deeply mourned with them, even as He ushered his own Son to temporary safety in a foreign land.
• A King who had compassion on the poor and sent His Son as a gift for every person in that empire and beyond, no matter how rich or poor the people were.
• A Sage who was supremely wise in His choice of earthly parents for His Son.
• A Provider who cleared a place for the virgin to give birth without complication – and who gave her the strength and courage to do so.
• A Giver who began to offer sweet living water and the breaking of infinite chains when His gift quietly slid into this dark world.

In moments of personal reflection, I am most thankful for two things. I thank God for the words of peace the angels spoke in the midst of man’s fear. And I’m equally thankful that this peace I celebrate is not dependent upon the absence of the bad, but instead is based on what (or Who) I hold onto in the midst of the bad.

That is the peace and gift wrapped up in infant skin.

In the beginning, all was dark.

And God spoke, breathing light into the universe. Then He created every formed and living part of the universe and crowned His creation with this glory: a man and a woman. And He breathed life into the human body from the very essence of His Spirit.

Many centuries later, a prophet lived in a time of darkness, uncertainty, and longing. And God gave him these words of promise: “There will be no more gloom for those who were in distress…The people walking in darkness have seen a great light; on those living in the land of the shadow of death, a light has dawned.” In that promise, He was again breathing light into the universe and He was foreshadowing the glory to come when we would have the chance to choose rebirth in and refilling with His Spirit.

Centuries later still – even now – there are many people, times, and places that are once more shrouded in darkness. But, again, we have been given a gift of the Spirit that can abide in the willing heart, and we have the promise of a day we long for, a day the Spirit inside us groans for with all creation. Light will gloriously appear to fully engulf the universe and dispel all darkness forever. And the Spirit will usher a Bride to her wedding ceremony.

This first advent Sunday, we celebrate hope. And we rejoice in the fulfilled words of the Prophets and in God’s wondrous, mysterious, magnificent way, acknowledging that hope is always – and only – possible in His light and His Spirit.

Gloria to the God of light and hope.