GOD’S UNRELENTING LOVE

(Guest post by: Trent Claybaker) Blogmas Day Sixteen 2024

For our Friday night men’s group… I announced then what was already on my heart. Y’all will know what I’m talking about as you read!

The other day, while I was doing my weekend errands, I grabbed a congratulations card for a young husband and wife that recently revealed that they will soon be the proud new parents of a baby boy.

As I was writing to the new mom and dad, it became even more clear to me that the Christmas season needs to be held to a higher reverence than what we give it. It should be a somber, yet joyful, reminder of God’s unrelenting love.

I’ve grown pretty close to the new dad over the past couple of years. If you know me at all, you will know that when the Lord opens a door of opportunity to speak of His goodness, I tend to jump over the threshold in pretty quick fashion.

The new dad is a couple decades my junior, so there is always opportunity to pour into him on a work level but, I get way more joy out of different conversations that we are able to have. Conversations that have NOTHING to do with work.

I have taken a shine to him, probably because he reminds me a bunch of myself when I was his age. I am in no way judging, but to say there is little Jesus in his life would not be too much of a stretch.

Sadly, I have to say the same thing for that point in my life. This of course then, allows me the great opportunity to speak into him things that he probably has not heard before.

So, when he and his wife told me, before telling anyone else, that they were expecting a child, I was overjoyed at the news. I remember exactly what I and they were doing when they shared with me that news.

I’ll spare the details but I will share with you that at the end of our conversation, we closed in prayer and if I am completely honest, the three of us were all crying at God’s goodness and blessings of a new baby.

John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world that He gave His one and only Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish but have eternal life.”

The giving of His one and only began with announcing to Mary that she would be bringing forth the Messiah, the Messiah as a babe. I find myself wrestling with the idea that God sent His only begotten to earth, knowing that His begotten would ultimately end up on the cross.

This was His plan all along, to send His son to save humankind from the affliction of evil. Unrelenting love!

If you are a parent or are like my friends, about to be parents, I would ask you to chew on the previous paragraph. We struggle with the idea of raising children to be good people. We struggle with the question of how our children are going to turn out.

Are they going to be athletes? Are they going to be good and smart students? Will they have families of their own one day? Will we always be as close to one another as the day they were born?

Through all the questions though, there is great assurance knowing that no matter how much we love our children, God loves them even more!

As I put the final words on the card to my friends, I couldn’t help but think of Mary and Joseph bringing baby Jesus into the world. I tend to believe that they had bigger questions knowing they were directly responsible for the raising of the Messiah.

They would be raising the King of Kings, Lord of Lords, and hopefully for you, Savior of your life. I certainly don’t mean to downplay our roles and responsibilities as parents.

We are after all, to raise our children in the ways they are to go, but let’s be humbled, we haven’t raised or are raising a messiah. (Praising God that He’s already taken care of that!)

I don’t want to be cliché, but I would offer a challenge for each of us to remember the real reason for the season. The trees, lights, and decorations are all beautiful but, the greater beauty is God’s unrelenting love and the reminder of that love through the birth of the little babe!

Merry Christmas to each and every one of you, dear readers. May you and your families be blessed with God’s unrelenting love in the coming Christmas season!