Christmas with Grace

This powerful message challenges us to reconsider what we mean when we talk about God's love. Drawing from the prophetic words of Isaiah 53, written 700 years before Christ's birth, we're confronted with a stunning truth: God's love for us was never reckless or impulsive. Instead, it was deliberate, calculated, and fully informed. Jesus didn't stumble into the manger unaware of what awaited him—the rejection, suffering, piercing, and crushing described in Isaiah's prophecy. He counted every cost, considered every consequence, and chose to love us anyway. This isn't a love that might change when things get difficult or when the full reality becomes clear. This is a love that saw all our failures before we committed them, witnessed every moment of our lives before we lived them, and still declared us worth the ultimate sacrifice. The invitation here is transformative: when we truly grasp that we are loved with eyes wide open, we become freed to love others the same way. We see examples all around us—teachers who return to struggling students year after year, volunteers who enter dark situations knowing the cost, spouses who choose daily to love through difficulty. This Christmas season, we're called to make God's love visible by loving others deliberately, thoughtfully, and sacrificially, just as Christ loved us.