This week’s letter is from Renovaré Content Manager Grace Pouch.

Dear friends,

Believing in God comes easily to me. Loving God… can be elusive.

Love is more than mere feelings, yes. But, the question remains: Can I really love God with all my mind, heart, soul, and strength if my feelings are excluded?

After all, God has made us creatures with affections. We feel. We can share in the delights and sorrows of others, and be nearly overcome with concern for their wellbeing. We can be warmed by memories of their words, touch, or face.

In The Four Loves, C. S. Lewis says Affection is the ​“humblest and most widely diffused of loves, the love in which our experience seems to differ least from that of the animals.” But Lewis continues, ​“Let me add at once that I do not on that account give it a lower value.”

Might God want our love for him to involve our feelings? To want to be with God. To have tenderness toward God.

The Incarnation sparks these affections and stokes the fire of the heart. Enfleshed, especially as a tiny baby, Jesus draws me into a loving relationship with the Trinity by way of my natural, creaturely affection. 

If you find that you can’t quite identify with the language of ​“feelings” in your relationship with God (I’ve been there!), the selections this week may be a bit uncomfortable. William of St-Thierry and Augustine both speak in terms of ​“endearment.” And the grand words from John 1 come from the young disciple who called himself ​“one whom Jesus loved” and who nestled against Jesus at the Last Supper.

One way to move in this direction of all-encompassing, affectionate love for God, is to join the onlookers of the Nativity and draw near to the Christ child.

Images often help.

In a painting from Rien Poortvliet’s out-of-print book, He Was One of Us, a shepherd bends over the Holy Family with hands folded across his chest in a universally recognizable gesture of fondness. The artist’s style cuts through the familiarity of kitschy Christmas decor (interestingly, C.S. Lewis identifies overfamiliarity as the killer of true Affection).

The painting’s inscription reads:
A man, a woman, a child
so human, so inescapable
Here God holds open house
He lets himself be known

How easy it is to love a baby! I thank God for giving us this way in.

May the creaturely affection planted deep in the human soul to admire and adore a baby fill you with an ever-growing love for God.