Incarnation as Inspiration
Hope your Thanksgiving was a special time with family and friends. I hosted some of my out-of-town family and I am glad the busy-ness of that gathering is over and someone else is hosting for Christmas. Whew. Now I can breathe a bit and tackle the rest of my to-do list.
As a part of the Big Ridge support group, I have been reading Mission of Motherhood by Sally Clarkson and thinking about the whole idea of unconditional love. Here is what Sally says:
“In building meaningful relationships with our children, however, I must learn to accept unconditionally the person God made each of them to be — even with personality traits different from mine or that make me feel uncomfortable. I need to accept the ‘warts’ and irritating characteristics that may never change. I have to love my children with a mature committment that reaches past my feelings for them, which can change from circumstance to circumstance.”
The idea of loving “in spite of” seems so foreign to me. Yet it is the reason for the incarnation. Christmas is about God’s love for us in sending Jesus. Romans 5:8 says while we were yet sinners, God commanded His love toward us. Meditating on that makes me see that the love I have for my husband and children is just a pale imitation, if one can even call it that. So many times I see no resemblance to God’s kind of love at all in the way I treat those I love.
Again these words are not just directed to you the Esprit readers, but to me as I am needing a fresh look at God’s unconditional love for His children. I need to see how that love is not based on what we do or do not do. God, in His mercy and sovereignty, set His love on us. His love does not change even as we change, we sin, we do not love God or His Words and laws. My hope is that such a perusal of the character of God’s love for us will give us a picture of the love we are to have for our husbands and children. Furthermore that we would be inspired and enabled to demonstrate that kind of love.
Here are some words from A.W. Pink in The Attributes of God:
“There was nothing whatever in the objects of His love to call it into exercise, nothing in the creature to attract or prompt it. ... God did not love us because we loved Him, but He loved us before we had a particle of love for Him. ... What was there in me to attract the heart of God? Absoutely nothing. But to the contrary, there was everything to repel Him, everything calculated to make Him loathe me — sinful, depraved, a mass of corruption with ‘no good thing’ in me.”
Sometimes — OK, many times — there seems to be nothing to prompt our love to our families. In fact, they seem to be pushing all our buttons. Those are the times when we must remember the source is not in us, rather we must rise to the occasion with a mature love which transcends our feelings.
God tells us He will help us, He will empower us to do what is not in our nature to do. That will speak worlds to our children about the reality of our faith. Here are some more verses to bask in about God’s love for His people with my thoughts in parentheses.
Deut. 23:5. “The Lord thy God turned the curse into a blessing unto thee, because the Lord thy God loved thee.”
(We too can transform the difficulties of life into an opportunity to bless those we love.)
Psalm 42:8. “The Lord will command His lovingkindness in the daytime and in the night His song shall be with me.”
(We can verbally bless — greet, encourage, pray aloud for — our children first thing in the morning and last thing at night.)
Jeremiah 33:3. “Yea, I have loved thee with an everlasting love; therefore with lovingkindness have I drawn thee.
(When we need to draw our children to us in a time of teaching a lesson, may we remember to do so with soft words and comforting measures rather than tones of exasperation and harshness.)
Ephesians 2:4, 5: “God who is rich in mercy, for His great love wherewith He loved us, even when we were dead in sins hath quickened us together with Christ.”
(God did not wait until we had fixed ourselves up, for we could not fix ourselves up! It was while we were dead, unresponsive, unsuited, that He called us and wooed us with His irresistable love. How often do we get so discouraged by a child’s bad attitude that we just give up?)
Now why is it on the day I am thinking these thoughts and typing these words out, I seem to be even less loving and more harsh than usual? Ah, God’s truths have magnified my weakness, there is no semblance of righteousness, my need for His grace is so much more evident.
Another favorite and oh-so-practical source of inspiration in this area of loving children and husbands as God has called us to is Edith Schaeffer’s book What is a Family? What I love about this book is that it is so real in its applications. Edith draws from her life and that of her grown children and their families’ lives true pictures of what it means to live in a family.
She describes real scenarios of disappointments, and how they were responded to wrongly and then rightly. Ouch. I see way too much of myself in the wrong examples! Here are some of Edith’s insights:
“The reality of love we are meant to strive for in our family life is made clear in I Cor. 13:4-8, the biblical explanation of love. ‘Love suffereth long and is kind’ … It is during the bearing of someone else’s weaknesses and irritating qualities that love must suffer long… ‘Love envieth not. Love vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up. Love doth not behave itself unseemly, seeketh not her own, is not easily provoked, thinketh no evil. … What conversations and what demonstrations can take place about these possibilities of showing forth love, day after day, week after week. How often each one in the family will fail, yet how often a success in showing real love can be pointed out… Love has work to do! Hard and self-sacrificial work — going on when it would be easy to be provoked and to think evil as the clock hands move, and the person hasn’t yet come home. … Love takes imagination and the balance of putting first things first, to be taught to the young pupils in their formative years. ‘Love beareth all things, believeth all things, hopeth all things, endureth all things. Love never faileth.’ … A child needs to grow up knowing that love never faileth, that not only will Dad and Mom stay together in spite of each of their weaknesses as well as strenghts, but that the door will always be open, the ‘candle in the window’ will never go out. … Can human love be perfect? No, but it is meant to be worked at through the years, and it is meant to portray something, within the family, of the love of God for His family of children. … The mark of Christian families should be the demonstration of love in the day-by-day, mundane circumstances of life, in the many moments of opportunity to show that love suffereth long.”
As always God does not leave us to our own devices to somehow come up with this kind of love. He assists us with His grace, wisdom and strength. Where we are weak, He can show Himself strong. Where we are empty, He can fill us. We can ask Him for daily grace to be what we are not naturally.
In this December/January issue of the Esprit, is a charming article by Andree Seu, a writer for World magazine, that is about delight.
We need to delight in the holiday season—delight in God’s love for us, delight in our love for our families. We have also tried to find some activites around town that hopefully will delight your children as well as make learning enjoyable.
If you know of any activities we have not mentioned, please let us know and we will be glad to include them in the February issue.
Take time this Christmas to revel in God’s love for His people, for you, in sending a Savior, Christ the Lord.
Merry Christmas and a blessed New Year to all!
— JMT
