For those of you who know me, you know I love talking about love. More specifically, I love talking about agape love. 

English, if we’re honest, isn’t the best language in the world. The grammar rules are very confusing and we don’t have enough words for love, we just have one.

I love Christmas and holiday cheer and I love Adrian but those kinds of loves are vastly different. Just like loving eggnog (if that’s your thing) is vastly different than loving our enemies. One is a preference and the other is a choice.

In Greek, which is the language that the New Testament is written in, there are four different definitions of love. 

1. Eros, or romantic love

2. Storge, or affection/familial love

3. Philia, or brotherly love

4. Agape, the sacrificial love of Jesus. 

While I'm sure there is room during Advent for eros and storge, and philia, I want to focus on agape this week. Why? Because this is the primary form of love Jesus preached about and demonstrated and I believe it’s the form of love that is most needed this time of year. 

Christmas time can be a difficult season for people. For some it’s memories of a loved one they’ve lost, others are reminded of a time before brokenness entered their family dynamic, and sometimes Christmas just highlights the loneliness people feel. Whatever the cause, it’s not always peppermint sticks and holiday cheer this time of year, sometimes Christmas is painful. 

Which is why I want to encourage us to practice the act of presence as a form of agape to those around us. 

Earlier this year, Adrian lost his maternal grandmother. Regrettably, I didn’t know her very well so while my heart broke for my husband, I didn’t have the same emotional pain he did. In a world full of the desire for quick fixes and instant healing, I had to learn to just sit with Adrian in his pain; I had to learn to love him by just being with him. 

Loving someone this way can be costly. It requires humility, patience, and sacrifice. Ephesians 4:2 puts it this way, “Be completely humble and gentle; be patient, bearing with one another in love.” The Greek word for “bearing” can also be translated “suffering” so Paul is exhorting us to “suffer with one another in sacrificial love.”

I know time is fleeting during the holiday season. But I want to encourage us to reach out to someone we know who might be going through a difficult season and offer to spend time with them. To practice agape love by sitting with them in their pain. We cannot fix what hurts. Only God can do that. But we can grab coffee or invite them over for dinner. We can listen without spewing quick fixes or sharing a story of ours that theirs reminded us of. We can practice the art of presence as an act of love to those around us.