A pinch of faith, hope and love with three French hens!

 

Merry Christmas!  This year is interesting, in that Hanukkah fell during the same week of Christmas.  In the African American community, Kwanzaa has always been the bridge carrying us from the joys of Christmas into the promises and hope of the coming year.  On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me; three French hens.  In the song “The Twelve Days of Christmas,” the three French hens represent the three theological virtues, which can be found in 1 Corinthians 13:13 “And now faith, hope and love abide…and the greatest of these is love.

By definition faith simply means a firm belief in something for which there is no proof.  In many times the acts of God do not bear proof or evidence of his movement.  We just believe in our hearts that God has met us there.  Faith means different things to different people.  To some, it can be the backbone of their religious convictions.  For others, faith is an allegiance, duty or devotion to a person or organization.  From a spiritual standpoint, acts of faith are things in which many times we do not have any verifiable proof.  Faith in God defies, human logic and intellect. 

Hope is a desire accompanied by expectation of or belief in fulfillment.  As a verb, hope means to cherish a desire with expectation of attainment.  Hope is one of the themes of the season of advent.  With earnest expectation we are hoping and waiting for the return of our Lord Jesus Christ, as we reflect on his first coming to a small town called Bethlehem, and whose care was entrusted to a peasant teenage girl and a carpenter from Nazareth.  In his coming, Christ would bring hope to the hopeless and love to those deemed unlovable by society.  Chapter eleven of Hebrews says that “Faith is the substance of things hoped for, and the evidence of things not seen.”  Jesus told his disciples that with a little bit of faith that they could move mountains.  Our Faith and trust in God is a powerfully explosive tool with lots of potential.

Webster’s first definition of love is: A strong affection for another arising out of kinship or personal ties.  At most weddings what I call the Love chapter of the Bible (I Corinthians 13) is read.  This is a beautiful passage of what love is in the eyes of God and how he expects us to demonstrate it to each other.  “Love is patient; love is kind; love is not envious or boastful or arrogant or rude.  It does not insist on having its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice in wrongdoing, but rejoices in the truth.  It bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.  Love never ends.”  (I Corinthians 13:4-8a).  Love is an explosive emotion with exponential effects and consequences.  For the love of money, people will turn on each other.  For the love of religion, people will persecute and judge others.  For the love of temporal possessions, people will turn their backs on God.  With our faith and hope engaged in God’s goodness and mercy; beloved, let us love one another as Christ loves us.  On the third day of Christmas, my true love gave to me, faith, hope and love.  The greatest of these gifts is love.

Christmastide Blessings and Peace,
Karsten