Advent: Love Comes Down

Everything Happens with Kate Bowler

Everything Happens Studios

Health & Fitness, Religion & Spirituality, Society & Culture

4.8 • 4.7K Ratings

🗓️ 22 December 2025

⏱️ 4 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

By this point in December, love has been merchandised within an inch of its life. It jingles in ads that say if you really love someone, you should buy them a luxury car with a bow the size of a house.

But Advent tells another story. God did not arrive in a grand gesture—no skywriting, no fireworks, no leather interior with heated seats. Love slipped into a Bethlehem stable, swaddled in rags.

This is not the love we usually want. We’d prefer it to be shiny and obvious. Instead, God gives us the kind of love that chooses vulnerability. A baby who cannot even hold up his huge noggin. A terrified teenage mom. And a dad who's trying to believe this is not all a terrible mistake.

And yet—this is the love that remakes the whole world. Not quick or efficient, but slow and human. Love that needs to be changed and snuggled. Love that grows up to sit with outcasts and weep at gravesides and promise that nothing—not even death—can separate us from God.

So here we are, a few days from Christmas, and maybe the invitation is to look for love in small ways. In a text that says, “Made it home safe.” In a neighbor shoveling your walkway. Love in the God who came close, unnoticed but never unneeded.

Subscribe to Kate’s Substack for blessings, essays, and reflections that hold what’s hard and beautiful. Join us for Advent over there, too!

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Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode is brought to you by Lilly Endowment as part of our series on Christian spirituality,
0:04.7	a chance to have a moment to reflect on life and faith in the service of knowing and loving God.
0:12.4	Okay, so by this point in December, love has been merchandised within an inch of its life.
0:18.2	It jingles in every commercial that insists that if you really love someone,
0:22.6	you'll prove it with a huge luxury car with a bow the size of a house. And sure, that's one kind of love.
0:29.5	And if you have the means for that kind of love, my address is, just joking. But it is like one
0:36.2	kind of love. It's loud.
0:37.7	It's shiny.
0:38.5	It's probably least.
0:40.1	But Advent tells another story.
0:42.4	God didn't arrive in a grand gesture.
0:44.9	No skywriting, no fireworks, no leather interior with heated seats.
0:49.6	Love slipped into a Bethlehem stable, swaddled in rags.
0:53.9	So this is not the love we usually want.
0:59.3	We'd prefer something with a little more sparkle,
1:03.5	maybe a little more certainty.
1:06.5	Instead, God gives us a love that chooses vulnerability, a baby that can't hold up his enormous
1:14.9	newborn head, a teenage mom trying not to fall apart, a dad whispering, please, Lord, let this not
1:23.6	be a terrible mistake.
1:25.8	And yet, this is the love that remakes the whole world.
1:30.2	Not quick or efficient, but slow and human. Love that needs to be changed and fed and
1:38.0	rocked back to sleep. Love that will grow up to sit with outcasts, to weep at gravesides, and promise that nothing,
	...

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