04Advent2020

fourth week (LOVE) Advent devotional for teens

¹ Time is a funny thing, don’t you think? On the one hand, it feels like we just started doing this Advent thing. I mean, you’ve only received this delivery three times before. Barely started. And on the other hand, it feels like we’ve been doing this for a long time. What? We’re still waiting? How can this be? ¦

We’re not the first people to experience this variation in how time feels. They felt it in the days of Jesus, and a thousand years before that as well. Psalm 90 (written long before Isaiah’s time – in fact, scholars believe it’s the oldest of all 150 psalms) says that “a thousand years in your sight, Lord, are like a day that has just gone by,” and the letter of Second Peter (2 Peter, written a few decades after Jesus) quotes Psalm 90. And actually, English hymnwriter Isaac Watts (a pastor who wrote Joy to the World three hundred years ago) used the same phrase in the hymn O God, Our Help in Ages Past. Each of these writings examines the difference between God and people when it comes to the passing of time.

Anyway, on the fourth Sunday of Advent, the Sunday before Christmas, we light the candle of LOVE. No reflection on love could be written without mentioning the most famous of Bible verses, John 3:16 “For God so loved the world that he gave his only son, that whoever believes in him would not perish, but have eternal life.”

And of course the accompanying candy for “love” has to be Hershey’s Kisses. So grab some Kisses and turn the page.            (I’m curious, do you smooth the Kisses wrappers out,
or do you squish them all into one ball? Send me a picture!)

 Remember: email or call the church or Pastor Kerry if you have questions, or want a Bible, or if you want to share this thing with a friend. We’ll get another reflection to you on Monday!

4.1 A reflection for the third week of Advent

So like “shalom,” “love” is one of those words whose definition we think we know, but actually the word is much bigger.

Think of the different kinds of love we have. We love chocolate. We love kittens. We love our family. We love our friends. Maybe we have a romantic partner we love. Maybe we love God. That’s at least six different kinds of love right there, and there are many more. People have written all kinds of things about love, and not surprisingly, we find the idea throughout the Bible as well. Almost at the very end of the Bible is a little book called “First John (1 John),” and that author writes some good reflections about love:

     1 John 4:7-12
       ⁷ Beloved, let us love one another, because love is from God;
       everyone who loves is born of God and knows God.
       ⁸ Whoever does not love does not know God, for God is love. 
       ⁹ God’s love was revealed among us in this way:
          God sent his only Son into the world so that we might live through him. 
          ¹⁰ In this is love, not that we loved God, but that he loved us
          and sent his Son to be the atoning sacrifice for our sins. 
       ¹¹ Beloved, since God loved us so much, we also ought to love one another. 
       ¹² … if we love one another, God lives in us, and his love is perfected in us.

Love has to do with value, with how much we appreciate a certain thing or person, with what we’ll do to hang on to something or someone. And God’s love for us, God’s love for you, is so great, so big, that God would do *anything* for you, to get your attention, to see you smile. If God has a refrigerator, your picture is on it.

 

Let’s pray: God, your love is amazing, and I’m learning to see it with new eyes. Thank you for the ways people have shown me your love. Amen.

4.2 A reflection for the fourth week of Advent

The family is probably the first place we learn about love. When my daughter was born, I just held her in my arms and looked at her and cried, I was so happy. Having a child changed me – it helped me understand and appreciate my parents even more. Did you ever consider that your parents were your age once? That they faced some of the things you’re facing? Even though the world you’re growing up in is different than the world they grew up in, they still had things to deal with; teachers they liked and teachers they didn’t like, best friends as well as people they didn’t like or understand. They wanted to belong and they felt hurt when they were left out. They longed for love, for acceptance, and some of them found it. They loved their parents and at the same time probably didn’t understand them. The family is one of the first ways we learn about love.

Becoming a parent also changed my understanding of God my relationship with God. I understood that God cared for me in the same way I cared for my daughter, that the feeling I felt looking at my newborn child, God felt that way for me. I understood love in a new way.

We started Advent by considering how God was arriving in the world – how Jesus was a baby 2,000 years ago, how he said that he would someday return, and how we can be in relationship with him today. The light that is Jesus is still coming into the world, and we are all still growing up, and maturing, and looking forward. Consider this other writing from First John about love:

      1 John 3:1-2
      3 ¹ See what love the Father has given us, that we should be called children of God;
      and that is what we are…  ² Beloved, we are God’s children now;
      what we will be has not yet been revealed.
       [But] what we do know is this: when Christ appears [that is, when he returns],
      we will be like him, for we will see him as he is [that is, as fully God and as fully mature]. 

Do you see the Advent language here? Anticipation of his arrival?
Do you see the family connection and the love?

Let’s pray: God, it’s kind of new to me to think of you as family. Thank you for loving me. Let your light show me more of you, and make me more like you.

Writing prompt:
Christmas is not far away! What are some things you’ll remember about December 2020?