He was sulky, whiney, and disobedient. He was all of 13 and when you asked him to sit, he’d stand. Ask him to talk and he’d walk away. He never made his bed or picked up his clothes. He ignored all the house rules. He didn’t even have the saving grace of being a cute child. He was, instead, too thin with severe acne and the scars from picking at his pimples.
He had been badly abused for years and prospects did not look good for him. The staff at the children’s home were doing the best that they could, but he kept running away and they were at the end of their rope of patience.
There was nothing loveable about this child and everybody knew it. What was worse --- while they wanted to love him --- while they knew they ought to love him --- they just couldn’t. He was not the poster child for abused children every where, the ones that would make donors pull out their check book. He was, and still is, a hard case.
But for such as him, God came.
You see God didn’t just come for the loveable ones. He came for the unlovable as well. He came for the prostitute as much as the priest --- for the thief as well as the policeman walking is beat. He came for the two year old kicking and screaming as well as for the sleeping baby.
When we paint the pictures for our sermons, particularly at Christmas time, our natural tendency is to choose stories of love all soft and gooey, with happy ever after endings, but that’s not where the real story of God’s love is.
The real story --- what God really wants us to know is – that God will still love us when loving us seems impossible.
God will still love us when we are being a jerk. He will love us even when we just walk away, doing what we want, when we want, and hang the consequences. He loves us even when we take His love and nail it to a cross. Can anything separate us from the love of God in Christ Jesus our Lord?
No. Scripture is clear and certain. Nothing --- absolutely nothing --- can separate us from the love of God. God’s love will endure forever.
It’s not just a Sunday kind of love that covers us when we are here in our places with bright, shining faces. It is not just there when we are on our best behavior.
It is there during the hard times too, when loving us is anything but easy. It is there for the innkeeper who could not make room as well as for the shepherd watching over his flock by night.
You see, God’s love will not turn and walk away from us when we turn and walk away from Him. His love will stay there and wait for our return, just as the father waited in love for the return of the prodigal son. Even more, His love will come seeking us out.
That’s the story of Christmas, the miracle of Christmas. God came seeking us out. For the perfect Christmas story is not found in the beginning of Matthew or Luke. It is found toward the beginning of John: “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only Son…” That’s the Christmas story in a nutshell.
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