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All year long we strive for joy and happiness, to live our lives on a level well above our current circumstances.
This is only natural. It is the human condition.
To me, TODAY is the big benchmark for a life well-lived. Each Christmas I look back 4 or 5 years and think about how I felt on those past Christmases. What was going on with the family and all my friends and associates. I try to measure how far I have come, emotionally, spiritually and physically.
I take a few minutes to really THINK about where I want to be NEXT Christmas.
Which really gets me thinking.
If Christmas is all about LOVE, then what must I do to demonstrate my love to everyone I know... not just a few times when the time is right, but every day... in every action I take and every thought I think?
What must I do to truly love my neighbor as myself?
What must I do to love myself even more... so I can increase my capacity to love others even more?
If love is the answer, how can I live my next 4-5 years so that, when I look back to today, I have the peace of mind that comes from knowing -- truly KNOWING -- that my life is being measured by my capacity to love?
Better.
I can do better each day, striving to achieve my personal best a bit more often.
And learn to love myself even when I fail.
Maybe that's the message of the season.
Unconditional love.
Learn to love others by learning to love yourself -- blemishes, failures and all.
Next Christmas I will look back on today and proclaim, Joy to The World... I have been given the gift of love.
What a beautiful idea.
I have received a gift 2 thousand years in the making.
That is a great post. It seems things are easier to say when noone is listening. I find myself often wondering, do others wish that they could show each other the ways that they feel more often? Am I wrong for really appreciating the friends and family that I hold close? Love is a very under used word and if other people feel the same way, then why don't they ever say it?
I think one can be a good christian as well as enjoy christmas with out love. Love is an abstract emotion. Kindness is what will rule the day. There are only two things I love, my mother and my dog that is still at my parents house. I think the word love is tossed around way to much, like a bong after finals week in college.
IMO, without love, there is no sympathy, no compassion, no willingness to serve as volunteers, no reason to keep your self and family safe..Love is involved in everything we do..Love is invisible and often silent, love is the center and reason for everything good that we do..
I think one can be a good christian as well as enjoy christmas with out love. Love is an abstract emotion. There are only two things I love, my mother and my dog. I think the word love is tossed around way to much.
One thing pretty much all spiritual paths agree on is that GOD IS LOVE. So if someone doesn't know love or feel love, then they sure do not know a god of any sort. A person gets to god through their heart, not their head.
In his beautiful book, The Four Loves, C.S. Lewis describes the four different types of love.
Storge (familial love) - Affection we feel towards relatives and neighbors...the classic example being between parents and children.
Eros (romantic love) - A very powerful force. It carries with it a suggestion, and often the explicit pledge, of eternity: "I will always love you." Yet we know from experience that Eros can be very fickle. Lewis writes, "Eros is driven to promise what Eros cannot deliver."
Philia (friendship love) - Unlike parents or neighbors, friends are truly chosen. United not so much by interest in each other, but by shared interest in something else - say, sports, shopping, or a common perception of the important things in life.
At their best, Lewis argues, these three forms of love demand from us our highest attachment. Each makes claims that seek to over-ride the other, and all competing affections. Yet Lewis shows that each contains severe limitations. Familial love can be so strong as to blind us to the needs of others outside the charmed circle. Eros is a known liar. Friendship can quickly degenerate into narrow exclusivity. The three universal loves, Lewis writes, need to be integrated and reconciled and governed by a fourth kind of love.
Agape (Charity) - It is the love we have for those who are nothing to us. It is the least selfish of all loves, and it is also the least natural. There is simply no Darwinian explanation for why people would care about and seek to help those who are complete strangers. Agape most closely approximates God's love for us. God loves us for no reason other than He chose to love us. We are called to try and approximate that love in the way we treat others. No other religion teaches Agape which is entirely an invention of Christianity. Little do secular folks realize that when they do good things that don't benefit themselves in any way, they are acting out a legacy of Christianity.
This is the love that the infant Jesus brought into the world some two thousand years ago.
I say if all people--including professed Christians--took more seriously the teachings of Christ, and sought to embody in their lives the distinctively Christian virtue of Agape, wouldn't this earth be a sweeter and lovelier place?
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