Advent week 4: Love that comes first

By the fourth week of Advent, something shifts.

The waiting hasn’t disappeared, but it feels different now. Hope has taught us how to sit in the dark without panic. Peace has reframed what we mean by calm and control. Joy has reminded us that delight isn’t something we manufacture but something we receive. And now, Advent turns our attention to love.

Not a vague feeling.
Not sentiment.
Not something fragile.

Love, as Scripture presents it, is something far more solid. Something that moves toward us.

Love That Does Not Stay Distant

When the Bible speaks about God’s love, it almost never treats it as an abstract idea. It shows us love in motion. Love crossing distance. Love entering real human space.

“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” (1 John 4:9).

God’s love is not proven by how intensely He feels, but by how fully He gives. Advent reminds us that love didn’t remain theoretical. It took on flesh. It learned to breathe. It entered a world marked by fear, power struggles, injustice, and quiet despair.

Jesus did not arrive in a peaceful world. He stepped into a tense one. A world shaped by Roman power, economic pressure, and spiritual exhaustion. And yet, this is where God chose to make His love visible.

Love in a Manger, Not a Throne Room

The details of Jesus’ birth matter more than we sometimes realize.

He is born to ordinary parents.
In an occupied land.
Laid in a feeding trough.
Announced first to shepherds, not rulers.

None of this is accidental.

God’s love does not announce itself with dominance or spectacle. It comes low. It comes near. It meets people where they actually are, not where they pretend to be.

Paul later reflects on this when he writes, “But God proves his own love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us” (Romans 5:8).

Advent love is not a reward for readiness. It is grace that arrives before we are prepared.

Love That Holds the Whole Story Together

Looking back across the last few weeks, this is where everything converges.

Hope was never just optimism. It was anchored in a promise.
Peace was never just calm. It was reconciliation with God.
Joy was never just emotion. It flowed from belonging to Christ.

Love is what binds them all.

Love is why God did not abandon a silent world.
Love is why the Prince of Peace came without an army.
Love is why joy could exist even in hardship.

Love is the reason Advent exists at all.

Love That Still Comes to Us

What makes Advent so enduring is that it does not only look backward. It trains us to recognize how God still works.

We still live in a world that feels unfinished.
We still wait.
We still wrestle.
We still hope.

And yet, the same love that entered the world in Bethlehem continues to move toward us now. Not because we have earned it. Not because we have everything together. But because this is who God is.

“See what great love the Father has given us, that we should be called God’s children” (1 John 3:1).

That is not poetic exaggeration. It is identity.

A Quiet Ending, Not a Rushed One

Advent does not end with answers neatly wrapped up. It ends with a child. With God close. With love embodied.

As Christmas approaches, the invitation is simple.
Do not rush past this moment.
Do not reduce love to sentiment.
Do not assume God is distant.

He has already come near. And that changes everything.