The heart of the Christmas season can be summed up in one term – love.
The brightness of the season highlights how we love others, especially those closest to us. That closeness is often through family, marriage, friendship, and more. Love is in every gift given, every smile worn, and every happy tear we shed.
We love because He first loved us. (1 John 4:19) This is to say that the love we have for others is a reflection of God’s love for us that existed long before we did. We love because God is love. When we love we are exhibiting, even in limited earthly ways, the very nature of the God of the universe.
And that love is exactly what powers the work of every pregnancy help organization.
In fact, that is what powers the heart of every outreach we have. It is the most amazing thing to willingly step into the life of a complete stranger and all of the drama they are experiencing surrounding their unintended pregnancy. And we do it with a love for God’s handiwork. That handiwork is evident in the woman, regardless of her circumstances and situation. That handiwork is also in the form of the yet-to-be-born child, regardless of the circumstances that surrounded the creation of that life.
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“A baby is God’s opinion that life should go on.”
– Carl Sandburg, Pulitzer Prize-winning author
Life is God’s idea, and shows His creative power in action.
The LOVE Approach, Heartbeat’s signature training for pregnancy help outreach, is constructed on the framework found in “the Love Chapter” we know as 1 Corinthians 13. In effect, it is the love of God that infuses the ability to champion the Gift of Life.
Wherever we are in the pregnancy help organization, it is love that is, and must always be, our bedrock for the work we do.
This is most evident in the one-on-one engagement with the women and men we serve. But it is also present in the leadership, governance, and administration of the organization. Everyone in the organization is, or should be, leaning into the power of God’s love to accomplish His great work of reaching and rescuing lives at risk.
It is no accident that the story of the Christchild centers around what looks to us as an “unplanned pregnancy.”
Of course, the pregnancy was very much planned by the God of the Universe. We see the evidence of that in the pronouncements of the prophets of the Old Testament centuries before. God’s plan always involved coming as a baby, born to a virgin. Mary’s willingness and Joseph’s acceptance cemented their part in the story.
We celebrate those precious moments from two millennia ago that involved an unborn child, an unmarried pregnant woman, a temporary housing need, and the God who was making all of it into a story for the ages. In doing so, we are also reminding ourselves that the God who made our salvation possible through those unusual set of circumstances is more than able to do something similar in the lives of those He puts in our paths today.
It is the pregnancy help movement, and its members’ love, expressed in their “yes” to do this work, that serves as a conduit of His love. And the miracle of them saying yes to the life within is, in its way, every bit as miraculous as what happened in that nativity so long ago.
It is well said that God’s love comes to us through people. As we gather together this Christmas, we can see and feel that love in those He has blessed us with.
In the same way, His love flows through the pregnancy help community as it faithfully champions the precious Gift of Life in your pregnancy help organization. Glory to God in the Highest!
LifeNews Note: Jor-El Godsey is the president of Heartbeat International. This column originally appeared at Pregnancy Help News.
