Love keeps on celebrating

CAROLYN B. SWAN

During the Christmas holidays everyone seems more loving. Families and friends get together, and old ties are renewed. Mere acquaintances, total strangers, and even sometimes outright enemies exchange holiday greetings. But when the pace starts to slow down and celebrations become memories, there's often a let-down feeling as polite reserve is resumed. It's almost as though love itself has come and gone with the passing of Christmas.

But shouldn't Christmas help to awaken people from a sometimes loveless, material sense of existence to realize that man's individuality is inseparable from unchanging, eternal Love, God? Christmas represents the growing influence of Christ, the very spirit of Love, in human lives. The event it commemorates—Christ Jesus' virgin birth—shows the incarnation of that ever-present spirit. The permanence of Christ, divine Love's healing and saving idea, was becoming known to humanity. The writer of Hebrews speaks of "Jesus Christ the same yesterday, and to day, and for ever."^{ Heb.13:8.}

Fear that the quality of love can fluctuate may arise from belief that the person of Jesus was God in the flesh. That very belief would imply that Love came and went then and so could come and go now. Mrs. Eddy writes, however, "Coming and going belong to mortal consciousness."^{ Unity of Good, p. 61.} The truth is that Love never leaves. Love is All-in-all.