Conspiracy of LOVE.

I used to think that God wanted much from me. I needed to be good and holy and upright and worthy and sacrificial and pleasing to the Lord. And because I thought that this was how I was to love God and that this is what his love would do in me, I believed that all the world WANTED something from me. I practiced the kind of life that was always trying to make up for the love I was so desperately searching for. But Mary shows me something different. God birthed his ‘essence-manifest' into the world through an unmarried teenage girl, not because he wanted something from me. But because he wants so much for me. For all of us. The second I discovered I was pregnant with both of my children, a fierce, incredible love ignited within me. It grew inside me with my babies, getting bigger and more developed every day, until the time came when the pangs of birth gripped my body, and as my body twisted and pushed these lives out and through it, a new kind of love was birthed with each one, too. A love filled with the fury of protection, the wrath of loyalty, and the grace of hope. I don’t want something from my children. I want things – so many things – for them. Love will make you do extraordinary things, even painful things, to bring about goodness and vitality, to show value and worth.

The incarnation of God into man, the pain and promise of birth, the Divine hidden and mixed into flesh, is the message of Christmas. Mary gave birth that night not singing “Silent Night” or “Joy to the World” or thinking calm and lovely and ‘Kingdom' thoughts. She groaned and pushed and bled and screamed. And fell in love. Jesus birthed in blood and pain testifies to my blood and pain. He is there in the thick of it, for rescue not judgment. Not because he wants more from us, but because he wants more FOR us. Hamilton Wright Mabie wrote: “Blessed is the season which engages the whole world in a conspiracy of love.” Written by @Lizzy.Milani via @pocketfuel.

Live loved.

KAE