“One of the enormous spiritual tasks we have is to claim that we are beloved and to live a life based on that knowledge.” –Henri Nouwen, “Being the Beloved”
My mom’s favorite food is ice cream, specifically mint chocolate chip ice cream with a chocolate waffle cone from Blue Bunny in Le Mars, Iowa. Her fridge is always stocked with at least six pints of different flavors of ice cream—one for each favorite flavor of every person in the family. A mealtime or family celebration isn’t complete without a little bit of ice cream at the end. She would always look over the table at us after a holiday meal and say, “Who’s ready for dessert?”, to which we would groan that we did not have space. But my mom would always reply, “Oh yes, you do. Ice cream fills in all the cracks.”
Love is a little bit like ice cream—there’s always room for more of it, and it comes in an abundance of flavors. Throughout Advent, we are waiting and preparing for our Lord to come again. Maranatha, Lord! But our waiting is not passive but active. Colossians chapter three says we prepare ourselves by stripping away the things that are not of Christ and clothing ourselves with the things that are: compassion, kindness, humility, meekness, and patience. Above all, we clothe ourselves with love, which envelops everything together in perfect harmony, or, as my mom would say, it fills in all the cracks.
When we fill in the cracks with love—God’s love that abounds and never-ends—we find that we can breathe a little easier amidst the chaos of life. Love envelops everything like a mother holds and protects a child in her womb, like God did with all of creation when beginning. This kind of love that we are meant to embody protects and perseveres. It is rooted in justice and based in action, not a feeling.
Most particularly, love is not based on our performance, because if God loved us solely based on our actions toward God, we would have failed many times over. But God loves us with an unfailing love, one that comes in the middle of our lives no matter if the stockings are filled, the tree is up, the kitchen is clean, or the turkey is burnt. God comes anyway in the vulnerability of a babe and into the loving arms of Mary, Joseph, a manger, a stable, and some barn animals. Though there is no room at the inn—though we may not feel adequate—love incarnate comes anyway.
Related: What if my heart is too frazzled to prepare him room?
Love disrupts the darkness of the season to bring us good news of great joy. In turn, we are invited into this work of Christ where water springs forth in the desert, where the blind can see, where a sinner can be saved by believing. We go about this work through our love of others.
So, as we go about our day, letting love slip into all the cracks where we cannot live up because of sin—when we forget to love the co-worker who lets us down, when we choose the easy way that harms our nature kin, when we judge ourselves at an unattainable standard. Let the love of God that covers a multitude of sins envelop it all.
Because at its core, this kind of holy love is also about resistance. This love pushes us toward the outcast, the lonely, the forgotten, and the widow. This love pushes us to give ourselves for our friends. This love asks us to resist the ways of this world that foster hate, bitterness, and injustice and to choose to clothe ourselves with something better.
May the urgency of the journey be all the more reason for compassion, and let love spark us into action and justice by the power of the Holy Spirit who dwells with us.
Rev. Vanessa Funk
Rev. Vanessa Funk is an ordained minister within the Reformed Church in America. She serves part-time at a church in upstate New York and part-time for the denomination in the office of General Synod as an administrative coordinator. Her continuing education is focused on restorative practices for churches and conflict resolution that seeks the unity, purity, and peace of Christ.
