Hope Begins With Love
Table Talk
Setting the Table
You are welcome here. The Spirit of God is gifting you great joys in little things. Take a couple deep breaths, grab yourself a cup of coffee, light a candle, sit in the glow of your Christmas tree lights – do something that brings you comfort.
Imagine a knotted spool of yarn. No matter how tangled it gets – with slow, intentional work – it can be made right again.
“To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable.”
- C.S. Lewis
For God so loved the world that he gave his only Son, so that everyone who believes in him may not perish but may have eternal life. Indeed, God did not send the Son into the world to condemn the world but in order that the world might be saved through him.
- John 3:16-17
Food for Thought
When my oldest son was about 3-yrs-old, he discovered a passion for tying knots. We did not teach him how to tie those knots, he learned to tie those knots all by himself and by watching others. On his really creative days, he would tie up a web of yarn that went through our kitchen drawers, around our sink faucets, through the refrigerator door, under and around our dining chairs, attached at each end to our exterior door handles. It was a tangled mess that took some diligent, deliberate work to get undone.
Throughout my life I have had experiences of untangling any number of things – as have you, I bet. From my young children’s curly hair, to the long strands of costume pearls my grandmother kept in her dress-up drawer, to the Christmas lights we just unpacked from the boxes in our garage.
We don’t mean for things to get tangled up the way they do sometimes – our jewelry, our hair, our lives. It just happens! The pace of life gets going too fast, and we get swept away in it.
Most of the time, we are just doing the best we can to keep up – just doing the next thing that is in front of us – or just doing what we have always done. We may not even be able to say why – but in these moments, we cannot break away enough to make it any different.
Perhaps this is where you are finding yourself already this season. Is there any time of year that feels more tangled up than this one? This season where our joy is so often knotted up with some of our deepest griefs. Where the pressures of consumerism are cutting off our generosity. Where our prayers for peace and our ability to hope are tied off by ongoing acts of war and violence; of hate and apathy; of hunger and homelessness. And where the possibility of God’s transformative love seems so distant.
It is so easy to get all tangled up in things.
When Niccodemus comes to Jesus in the middle of the night, it is to find some clarification about all that Jesus has been doing and teaching. For so long, people thought that God’s love was conditional – transactional, even. That God’s love had to be earned by following certain rules, or upholding specific customs, keeping the right company. And yet, when Nicodemus pushes Jesus to tell him what it’s really all about, Jesus responds with LOVE!
For God so loved the world – the cosmos – all of creation. Everything God does in, and through, and for the world is out of God’s love for the world.
Jesus is untangling the misconceptions about the ways that God’s love moves in the world. Through Jesus, we come to know a God whose love knows no bounds. In Jesus, we understand that God’s love is not based on the conditions, limitations, and the exclusions we put on ourselves and on others – but we discover God’s love as a gift freely given that we must learn to embrace and receive.
What a hopeful message for Nicodemus to hear. What a hopeful message for us all to let seep deep into our souls here at the beginning of Advent. To know that we are loved for love’s sake. There is nothing that we can do to earn it or to lose it. We do not have to wear ourselves out trying to be good enough or perfect enough – God loves us simply because we are.
So this Advent, as you are doing the diligent work of untangling things in your life – your Christmas decorations, your jewelry box, your fishing line – your misconceptions about God and God’s love, your griefs, and your hopes – may you find wrapped in there the invitation to know, with absolute certainty, the God who meets us all with unconditional love.
Make a knot or find one that already exists. Slowly begin the work of untangling. Try to approach this task with meditative ease – sometimes these things take time, and that’s ok!
It can be easy to lose sight of the love that inspires the reason we celebrate this season. Think of ways to invite more hope into your day-to-day routine. (Maybe it's saying a prayer for someone who you know needs it, shaking off some of the societal pressures of the season, or surprising someone with an act of kindness, etc.)
For a printable version of today's reflection Click Here!
If you are looking for a few ideas to create a more welcoming space this holiday season, here are Five Things to Remember When Setting a Welcome Table for the Holidays.
Blessing
God of Hope,
It is so easy to get tangled up in all that is going on inside and around us and to lose sight of the ways that you are with us in this season of waiting. May our hope for this season and for the world find its way to you, and may your boundless love encourage us enough that our hope becomes a light of love for those around us.
Amen.
A little Table Talk for your table...
Discuss with a friend your own memories of untangling things throughout your life. Enjoy taking this time to reflect together.
What things have you noticed are getting tangled up for you this Advent season?
How do you experience God’s love or the love around you as a source of hope in this season?
Try taking it to the Kids Table...
Have you ever tried to untie a knot? What was this like – was it a fun challenge, was it frustrating? How were you finally able to untie the knot?
What do you find hopeful about the Christmas season?
God’s love is unconditional. What does that mean to you? How does it make you feel to know you are so loved?
Meet Our Welcoming Voice!
Lin Story-Bunce is a North Carolina native, and lovingly calls Greensboro, NC home. She earned a Masters of Divinity from Wake Forest University and has served a wonderful and thoughtful congregation at College Park Baptist Church since 2009, pastoring to families and their faith development. Most of all, Lin loves the moments she gets to connect with her family, snowboarding with her wife and keeping up with their four kiddos and two energetic pups. Lin is a teacher, preacher, dreamer, and procrastinator who, if you ask her youth group, has a knack for trying to do way too many things in far too little time.
To hear more from Lin throughout the week, follow along on our Instagram!