Holy Nights
1 John 4: 7-13
Dear brothers, let us bear love toward one another,
for true love comes from God; everyone who is truly loving is born of God and
knows God.
Whoever does not truly love has not known God, for
God is love.
And this is what revealed God’s love among us, that
God has sent into the world his only begotten Son in order that we might live
through Him.
God’s love consists in this: not in the way that we
have loved him, but that he has loved us, and has given his Son to save us from
the banishment of sin.
My dearly beloved, if God has so loved us, so also
should we bear love toward one another.
Until now no one has seen God with his eyes. When
we bring love to one another, God dwells in us and his love is fulfilled in us.
By this we know that we dwell in him and he in us,
because he has given us of his Spirit.
Holy Nights
1 John 4:7-13
Shimmering in eternal realms is the great Tree of Life. In
Egyptian myth this tree is pictured as the great world tree. Its branches
support the star-studded sky, and it roots reach into the divine watery deep.
Its trunk forms the axis around which the world revolves. In the myth, the god
Osirus was encased in the trunk of this tree; he became the link between the
earthly and the heavenly realms.
Christ Jesus carried this further: on the tree of the cross,
the tree of death that became a tree of life, the divine creator’s arms are
outstretched in an embrace of love that includes the whole world.
We are each a living replica of the tree of life. Founded at
birth, we are rooted
This creative, sun-like center is the radiant beauty of
love. It is supported on the one hand by mercy and on the other by justice. For
the Christ-Sun on the cross was placed between the two thieves. To the one who
was willing to assume responsibility for his own deeds, the Christ-Sun’s beauteous
love showed mercy—“Today you shall be with Me in Paradise .”
Luke 23:43 To the one who railed and egotistically
cursed God, cutting himself off from divine love, there could remain only the
severity of God’s justice.
A merciful and just love—this is the love that God enacted
on the field of history. This is the love that He has implanted in each human
heart, from there to be radiated forth as the life-giving Sun of Divine Human
love. So, in the words of the poet:
Let us be like
…falling stars in the day sky.
Let no one know of our sublime
beauty
As we hold hands with God
And burn
Into a sacred existence …
That surpasses
Every description of …love.[1]
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