Advent Devotional by Charles Smith

Hosea 6:1-6

God’s love for Us:
God will come to us like the showers,
   like the spring rains that water the earth.

Our love for God:

Your love is like a morning cloud,
   like the dew that goes away early.

I was five the first time I saw the movie “White Christmas.” I loved it immediately. I’m a sucker for a good musical and a Christmas musical? That takes the fruit cake. I especially loved the snow, or rather the lack thereof. Throughout the movie, there is no snow. The characters sing songs wishing for snow and spend whole scenes wondering if Christmas without snow is even worth it. Then, when (spoiler alert) snow falls at the climax of the movie, there’s a sigh of relief and a joy fulfilled.

After that, each year I longed for snow. I did believe that Christmas without snow was somehow imperfect, lacking some core element.

And then it happened. One Christmas morning, I awoke to see beautiful, delicate flakes of snow blanketing the ground. How overjoyed I was! Finally, Christmas was complete.

But as I stepped outside, I didn’t feel flakes of snow on my face. Instead, I felt the cold raindrops of a December drizzle. As I watched the rain start to litter the ground, I could see the snow melting with each drop that fell. The thing I had spent years yearning for was slowly dissipating in front of my eyes.

Hosea describes our love for God as fleeting, transient, as ephemeral as evaporating condensation. But God’s love for us is not like that. As demoralizing as it felt to me, the drizzle that fell that morning continued throughout the week. The rain was constant, persistent, always there. And though I couldn’t see it, that rain was replenishing the earth.

In this season in which we celebrate Immanuel, God With Us, I am reminded that, though there may be times in which it seems like my love dissipates like the morning dew or melting snow, God remains with me, that love surrounding me like a mist. There is only one way that dew persists past the morning, and that is if other moisture joins with it. God is that replenishing rain that changes us, reshapes us, melts our coldness, and joins us together as drops of water connect on an elemental level. Rain, snow, dew, mist, God is with us in every way we need.

Charles Smith