Time and Love

I have so many friends right now who are facing frightening, life-threatening situations.  Difficult pregnancies and cancer diagnoses, and heart surgeries everywhere I turn.  Difficult, uncomfortable conversations need to be had to repair broken families and restore the love between husbands and wives, and parents and children.  Life seems really really hard for a lot of people living on the edge of "losing it" right now. 

A fat guy in a red suit and a tree with gifts underneath are probably not the answer, but a baby in a manger might be. The answer to all of our problems and difficulty might just be found in that kind of love shown to us in the person of Jesus that night.  He knew what it would cost him to love us, and he chose us anyway.  He loved us enough to give up everything for us.  Like husbands do for their wives.  Like wives do for their  husbands. 

He was loving and obedient to his parents, even though in reality he had authority over them...because he loved them and respected them.  He became a way for us to reconcile to the parents we've mistreated.  We need to seek out and forgive the family that has hurt us, and it won't be easy, but neither was the Cross.  But I dare say it was worth it to spend eternity with the one you love. 

When our very bodies turn on us, and fail and stop doing the job they were created to do, how do we find comfort?  Maybe we can look again to that cross and see how Christ spent every drop of flesh and blood that he allowed himself to be contained in, to love us.  He loved us as he took his first breath, and he loved us with his dying breath, and every one in between.  Our bodies aren't supposed to last forever.  How cruel that would be to keep us away from our Maker for that long!  But we CAN use every cell of our bodies that still works to love each other.  

Christmas will be here in a little over a week, but we are only a breath away from eternity.  What are you looking forward to?  If life is difficult for you right now, don't stop looking forward.  One thing is for certain...it won't always feel like this.  It won't always BE like this.  Time will fade your wounds to scars.  Time will soften the anger in your heart.  Time will change everything. Time and Love. I wish you both.