Each year at Christmas time as the Christmas songs play on the radio and the conversations about family drown out every other conversation, I'm struck with a heavy sadness. The sadness surrounding family members that I've lost seems to become so much bigger, and everything else so much smaller. I don't think that weight of sadness is what God had in mind when he sent his Son down to walk the earth and die for us. I don't think he wanted us to get to this season each year and wish for the things we don't have that other people seemingly do have.

That doesn't mean that we can't feel sad. And it doesn’t mean we shouldn’t miss those we've lost. Indeed God is right there walking with us in that sorrow. But no sorrow or loss that we feel in this world can take away from the love that he has for us. He exemplified his love for us when he sent his only son to die for us so that we could grow closer to him for all of eternity. He exemplified a love that we can only begin to understand... "in that while we were still sinners Christ died for us" (Romans 5:8), "that we should be called children of God" (1 John 3:1). It's a love that we get to experience every day right now, that one day will come to it’s fullness with the return of Jesus. Phillipians 3:20 says "Our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Savior from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.

Thus, no matter how much we might yearn for things... or people... at this time of the year, we have to remind ourselves that we already have so much more than we could ever ask for. We have the love of the God of the universe. It's a love so intense that "neither death nor life, neither angels nor demons, neither the present nor the future, nor any powers, neither height nor depth, nor anything else in all creation, will be able to separate us from the love of God that is in Christ Jesus our Lord (Romans 8:37-39).