Two of life's essential capacities are to be able to love and give. Our wholeness as human beings, our health, and, at the end of the day, our deepest joy, rests largely in our capacity to do these two things. And, of course, there's a relationship between the two. When we are given the gift of being loved, we can, in turn, love well.

Huston Smith is a scholar of world religions and a Christian. He has written a book the critics think is an important one: The Soul of Christianity: Restoring the Great Tradition. He observes that the people who heard Jesus' disciples proclaiming Good News were impressed as much by what they saw as by the word they heard. Jesus' followers had been transformed, changed by something. They were new people.

Smith concludes that it was love that did it: "God's love was precisely what the first Christians did feel. They had experienced Jesus' love and became convinced that Jesus was God incarnate. Once that love reached them, it could not be stopped."

Smith goes on to propose that just as the power hidden in the atom is only released by bombardment from without, so the love planted by God in every human soul is released and activated and called out by love's bombardment. What a fascinating thought. What a life-changing, world-changing idea!

A loving human being, Smith says, "is not produced by exhortations, rules, or threats. Love takes root in children only when it comes to them."

It's why the incarnation, the birth of God's son, is the gift that changed the world. The birth of Jesus Christ is love's bombardment and it releases, activates, and animates the love in all our souls.

We'll explore this notion in depth on Sunday. Ian Clark, our Pastoral Resident, will be preaching at the 8:45 service, and I will be in the other services. You can prepare by reading this passage.

Come, and bring a friend.