Second Sunday of Advent: Love

 God so loved the world

    that he gave his one and only Son…

    to save the world through him. (John 3:16-17)

In a letter smuggled out of prison to his friend, student and fellow pastor Eberhard Bethge; Dietrich Bonhoeffer notes how “a prison cell is a good analogy for Advent; one waits, hopes, does this or that—ultimately negligible things—the door is locked and can only be opened from the outside.” (LPP, DBW vol. 8, p. 188)  As we light the Candle of Love commencing our second week of Advent, we do well to recall that “We love because God first loved us” (1Jn 4:19).  We did not, of ourselves, generate the love to set us free. God, out of his love for us, comes and opens the prison door from the outside to set us free.