Singers, poets, screenwriters, and teenagers together have completed writing the book of love. Thanks to them, we are well versed in its virtues. All you need is love. It is patient and it is kind. Love never fails. It is wot bwings us togeder too-day. Love is like a red, red rose. It’s a crazy little thing called love. One love, one life is what keeps us going, gives us reason to get up in the morning. And love truly does change everything. Darkness cannot drive out darkness; only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate; only love can do that. Because love is love is love is love.

There’s nothing new I can say about love.

Except, it still surprises me. It’s the small glimpses of love that get me most. Everyone expects to feel overwhelmed during big life moments; like on wedding days or after the birth of a child. Love is intensely powerful. And yet, it’s the random surprise glimpses of love, the smaller-life moments, which sustain me.

Surprise glimpses of love…

…like that one time, in the summer between high school and college. Friends and I were returning to our northern Minnesota camp from a day off in town. It was the middle of the night and the northern lights came out. We pulled off the road without any words spoken and tumbled into night, sprawled out along the beach, and took in the unforgettable aurora.

Surprise glimpses… like, the mornings after I spend a much-too-late evening out with great women friends. On those mornings, when I should be cursing my alarm and fumbling to the coffee maker (even more excessively than usual), I feel miraculously alive and even cheery. 

Surprise glimpses… like when our old, orange cat chooses to snuggle up to one of my kids and then the chosen-kid pets him without consciously realizing it.

Surprise glimpses… like when I was a kid on Christmas Eve. We’d go to the midnight church service and sit in the choir loft. All the choir members’ kids were up there. Some of us kids would play instruments as a part of the worship service, some would accidentally unplug the Christmas lights, some would fall asleep. We chose to be a family in the choir loft. The love was thick. It was magic up there on Christmas Eve.  

Surprise glimpses of love leave me wanting more. They leave me wondering what if? What if the world is actually beautiful and graceful and sane? What if we are capable of being wonderful to each other? What if there really is something great out there?

At this point in Advent, it’ll technically be winter on Friday. The frost on the inside of our cold kitchen windows has been growing for four weeks already. Winter is long in Minnesota. And it’s dark; deeply dark. Still, I seriously love this season of hope, peace, joy, and love. 

I believe the mysteries of this wintery world are deep and wonderful. There is so much I don’t know. The world seems to be teetering on the brink and yet, what if?! What if the world is actually beautiful and graceful and sane? What if, in this deep dark, after all the work we’ve done to prepare, what if something great actually shows up?!