ZPCBlog

About the author: Amanda Heinz has participated in the ZPC community since being dropped off at the nursery back in 1988 up through her current Sunday mornings working as a part of the tech team. She very much enjoyed serving as a ZPC elder in the past, and she is currently employed as a high school Social Studies and ELA teacher at Shortridge High School in IPS. She and her husband, John, are enjoying their first Christmas as a married couple this year! 

“Dear friends, let us love one another, for love comes from God. Everyone who loves has been born of God and knows God. Whoever does not love does not know God, because God is love. This is how God showed his love among us: He sent his one and only Son into the world that we might live through him. This is love: not that we loved God, but that he loved us and sent his Son as an atoning sacrifice for our sins. Dear friends, since God so loved us, we also ought to love one another. No one has ever seen God; but if we love one another, God lives in us and his love is made complete in us.”  
1 John 4: 7-12

Before I typed out the first word for this Advent reflection, I decided to read through all 2025 Advent devotionals that had been published up to that point plus the verses for the ones that hadn’t been published yet (we writers get a “sneak peak” at all the verses for the season, although we still get the fun daily discovery of what our siblings in Christ write for the verses). Do you know what I noticed? In nearly all 23 previous devotionals and Bible verses that offered up reflections upon hope, peace, joy, and love, there also were reflections on suffering, fear, loss, anger, strife, and despair. Most of my fellow disciples stated the biblical truth that genuine hope, peace, and joy do not exist in the absence of pain and sorrow; instead, these life giving feelings well up in our soul as the natural response to acknowledging and meditating on God’s unearned, unconditional, all-encompassing, and eternal love for us. It all starts, and it all ends, with love. 

Love, both the love of God and the love God expects us to show all of his fellow children, is the message and commandment that the apostle John returns to over and over in his writings. For example, in 1 John, biblical historians agree that John is addressing a divided Christian community that has factions fighting and withdrawing from fellowship over doctrinal issues. Sound familiar? Unfortunately, this is a problem the Church faces throughout its history, and that humanity at large faces whenever trying to form a functioning and harmonious society. Again and again, John refers to love being the remedy. He reminds his readers that hating a brother or sister is the actions of one “still in the darkness” (1 John 2:9) and of one who “abides in death” (1 John 3:14). In chapter 3, John reminds us to look at the love God has given us, to look at him laying down his life for us, and to emulate the love of God to others “not in word or speech but in deed and truth” (1 John 3:18). The rest of 1 John after today’s verses 4:7-12 reminds readers that God is love, love casts out fear, and that loving the children of God is God’s commandment just as much as loving God. John definitely took Jesus’s words in Matthew 22:36-40 to heart: “ ‘Teacher, which commandment in the law is the greatest?’ He [Jesus] said to him, ‘You shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind.’ This is the greatest and first commandment. And a second is like it: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ On these two commandments hang all the Law and the Prophets." 

Everything hangs upon love. When I face adversity and sorrow, which are constants in life, the best way to maintain hope, peace, and joy in my soul is to dwell upon love: the love God the Father pours onto me from the moment he knit me together in my mother’s womb (Psalm 139:13), the love God the Son shows by coming into the world as an atoning sacrifice for me and all of humanity, the love God the Spirit teaches and reminds me of, whispering guarantees of my inheritance and redemption (Romans 5:5 and Ephesians 1:13-14), the love of my family, the love of my friends, the love of my husband, all showered upon me in countless small and grand ways every day. How can we bask in such love without it flooding our soul with hope, peace, and joy? How could it be contained to ourselves when it calls out to be spread to others? When we are deeply rooted and continually reminded of God’s love for us, it is as natural as breathing to love one another, and the more we love one another, the more we are reminded of God’s love for us. It is a beautiful reverberating ripple that strengthens with every reflection. 

Activity

Think about or discuss with your loved ones all the ways you have felt loved during this Advent season. Tell someone “I love you” today, even if, or perhaps especially if, you are telling it to yourself. Know that you are loved!

Prayer

God in Heaven, on Earth, and in our hearts, thank you for loving us. Thank you for loving the world. You see all of us exactly as we are, and love us. You see our sorrows, our failures, our despair, our selfishness, our rebellion, our cruelty, and love us. Your love sustains us and fills us with hope, peace, and joy. Help us to pour out your love onto others and make your love complete in us by doing so. Help us to love everyone we meet exactly as they are and where they are.

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