As we move into Christmas week (and Esther will get worked in, stay tuned!), let’s continue yesterday’s meditation on love…

One nice thing about the Christmas season is the number of Christmas musical specials on television. We don’t see too many, but we caught about half of the Tabernacle Choir’s concert, which included a short play about Victor Hugo, author of Les Misérables. The book To Love Is To Act by Marva A. Barnett could have been a source for that play. The concert’s play closes with:

“To love is to act”— “Aimer, c’est agir.” – Victor Hugo, written three days before his death

Here is the description of the book:

To love is to act”— “Aimer, c’est agir.”  These words, which Victor Hugo wrote three days before he died, epitomize his life’s philosophy. His love of freedom, democracy, and all people—especially the poor and wretched—drove him not only to write his epic Les Misérables but also to follow his conscience. We have much to learn from Hugo, who battled for justice, lobbied against slavery and the death penalty, and fought for the rights of women and children. In a series of essays that interweave Hugo’s life with Les Misérables and point to the novel’s contemporary relevance, To Love Is to Act explores how Hugo reveals his guiding principles for life, including his belief in the redemptive power of love and forgiveness.

No further comment is needed.

By this we know love, that he laid down his life for us, and we ought to lay down our lives for the brothers. But if anyone has the world’s goods and sees his brother in need, yet closes his heart against him, how does God’s love abide in him? Little children, let us not love in word or talk but in deed and in truth. (1 John 3.16 – 18, ESV)

The Spirit of the Lord is upon me, because he has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor. He has sent me to proclaim liberty to the captives and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty those who are oppressed. (Luke 4.18, ESV)