Around this time, many of us naturally reflect on and concentrate on a relationship with Christ. Many of us will also be reflecting on aspects of our own faith (whether it is Christian or otherwise) and our relationships with our families.

I'd like to offer a thought, a reflection on these things, and what it means to live and practice love.

Faith and Love

If Christ comes to save the world, his salvation is accomplished through love. Meaning that faith is doorway to love, and it is love that binds us to Him and brings us closer to him. Faith is the doorway. Faith is the entry point. Faith that recognize Jesus' significance, important and role in the life of humanity is the beginning point of Christ-centered love.

Faith is what brings one to the door, and which opens the door to Christ, but once you walk through that doorway and engage with Christ, that faith is perfected and consummated in a relationship of love. Can you love someone if you do not believe in them? No. Faith opens the heart; an open heart allows love to be received and to be given.

Who Does Christ Love the Most

So what kind of love is Christ's love? What, or who, does Christ love the most? Although Christ's love is transcendent and absolute, we ourselves are not absolute. We live in a condition where our hearts, and our love, are relative. Conditional.

The question of who Christ loves the most might seem strange. Surely Christ's love for each and every person is the same, identical. But for love to be fulfilled and reach the completion of it's purpose and intent, it must be received and returned. So the meaning of the question, what, or who, does Christ love the most is in fact this question: who is most able to receive and reciprocate the full, abiding and perfect love of Christ?

The more of Christ's love we receive and the more we give our hearts to him in return, the more deeply, the more fully, Christ's own love fulfills its potential and capacity. In other words, the deeper the relationship, the more that the love flows two ways; we receive his love, and he receives ours.

In terms of one's aspiration to follow Christ, to unite with Christ, to align with and become an instrument of Christ, this question of who can receive Christ's love the most becomes relevant. If you have no such aspiration, then perhaps it's not so relevant.

The Difference Between Christ's Heart and Our Heart

Our hearts are relative. We naturally aspire to love as the way that Christ loves, but how can we do that? The relative heart, the imperfect heart, that heart focuses on that which is closest to us. We love our family the most. Next, we love our community, those around us. Next, we may love our state, prefecture, our home town. We may also love our nation. Our love tends to expand out from ourselves to those things WE care about.

But is this how Christ's love works? Does Christ love your family more than he loves other families? Does Christ love your home town more than he loves any other person's home town? Does Christ love your nation more than other nations, or your people more than other's peoples?

No, that is not how Christ's love works. Christ loves each nation, loves each people, loves each home town and each family. Christ's love is unbounded and is not attached to self.

So how can we resonate with Christ's love, when our love is limited, conditional, focused on OUR concerns more than others, and our hearts are so naturally self-bound?

To rise up to Christ's level, and experience his heart as our own, we have to transcend our own limitations, our own concerns, our own focus. That involves a form of sacrifice, a sacrifice the nature of which Jesus showed with his own practice and course of life.

Jesus's Love Increased The Further it Extended

If Jesus had not stepped up to fulfill his mission, would his family, mother and brothers, think he was crazy? No. So why did he do it? Because Jesus loved his people more than his own family.

And if Jesus had not stepped up to fulfill his mission, telling the truth, would the people of Jerusalem have rejected him? No. So why did he do it? Because he loved his people more than he loved Jerusalem.

And if Jesus had not stepped up to walk the way of the cross, would his people, his nation, have rejected him? No. So why did he do it? Because he loved humanity more than he loved his own people.

This is the secret of Jesus' love, of Christ's love: to love the world more than you love your nation, to love your nation more than you love your own people, to love your people more than you love your own family, and to love your own family more than you love yourself. This capacity of Christ's heart for his love to increase the higher the dimension or the greater the scope of the object of love, this is Christ's love and heart.

How To Strike a Resonance With Christ's Love

This then is one secret, if not the secret, to finding Christ's heart and resonating with Christ's love, to have the greatest capacity to receive His love, and in that capacity, to enter into the greatest potential of unity with Christ:

To love each family as if it is your own family. To love each people as if they are your own people. To love each nation as if it is your nation. To love the world, humanity, above all.

This is not easy to do. Our limited, conditional and self-bound heart resists this path. And it is that self-bound heart that is the target that the devil continually seeks to latch on to, constantly seeks to stimulate within us and drag us down and away from Christ's love and heart, which transcends.

And yet, this is the path. So how to detach from our self-bound heart and connect with Christ's transcendent heart? In short, the key is sacrifice. Just as Jesus sacrificed his family for his people, and sacrificed his people for the world, and sacrificed himself for all.

In practice, how can we do this?

Ideally, if you are able to, in practice, love three nations concretely as if they are your own, with that same full measure of heart you give to your own nation, then in practice, you will achieve that higher resonance with Christ in that dimension.

If you are able to live with three peoples, and love those peoples with a pure heart as if they are your own people, with the same measure of love, then you will achieve that higher level of resonance with Christ on that same dimension.

If you are able to love three families, and serve them, as if they are your own family, with the same or greater measure of love you have for your own family, then you will achieve that higher resonance with Christ's love on that same dimension.

It's important to note here that it is about achieving a level or quality of love. For this, a period of time is required. It cannot be accomplished in a day, but it can be accomplished over a period of time, be it three months, or three years, or seven years, or forty years, etc. And once it is accomplished, once that level of love is invested and accomplished, it can never be lost.

Once you accomplish it, and offer it to God, then it is preserved for ever. You will have demonstrated, in the flesh, in substance, that you can love ANY nation, ANY people, ANY family as you can your own.

Practicing The Model Through Prayer

But this is not easy. Families, perhaps yes. But peoples? Nations?

In my own case, I felt called at the ripe age of 18 to love my nation with a full heart, but soon after, I felt God call me to sacrifice that love of nation and to love the world. To do that, I had to entrust my parents and siblings to God, and devote myself to that higher calling.

Over the course of my experience, I found myself living among three different peoples in three other nations not my own. Finally, at the end of more than two decades, God brought me back home and told me to love my family and love my nation fully.

But this is not easy and not everyone's path, either. So what to do?

There is a short cut to this, through prayer. Set yourself a period of time, and in your prayer, practice this principle of sacrificing your own [ ] and loving other's [ ] more. Pray like this:

God, I love my country, but you love all countries just as much as you love mine. So God, please bless and protect [three countries]. Please take care of them, and guide them, and watch over them.

Then, pray also for your own country.

*The key is to first prayer for those other (three or more) nations, and THEN after that pray for your own. Pray for those nations as if they are yours. Invest your heart in your prayer for them, and only after that, then prayer for your own nation. Then, apply the same principle to your people, your community, your family, etc.

E.g. When you pray for your people, pray like this:

God, I love my people, but you love all peoples just as much as you love mine. So God, please bless and protect [three peoples]. Please take care of them, and guide them, and watch over them.

Then, pray also for your own people.

When you pray for your family, or your spouse, or your parents, or your children, pray like this:

God, I love my [spouse/parents/family], but you love all [husbands/wives/parents/families] just as much as you love mine. So God, please bless and protect [three other people's [spouse/parents/family]. Please take care of them, and guide them, and watch over them.

Then, pray also for your own husband or wife, parents or family, etc.

You can pray in specifics, if you know the situation of these other three nations, peoples or families, etc.

Letting the Self Die and Christ's Heart Love

If you determine to do this over a period of time, you will find that your heart increases in its capacity to love, and you will come feel Christ's heart more towards these other nations, peoples, communities, families, etc.; You will come to recognize Christ's own love for those who are not close to you, and even for those who seem to have no connection with you. In this way, you can increase your capacity to love the way Christ loves, and experience Christ's unlimited, unconditional and transcendental heart.

Also, and this is important, your capacity to love your own nation, your own people and your own family will grow from that limited, conditional love into the love of Christ, the love that Christ actually feels for YOUR nation, for YOUR people, for YOUR family/spouse/parents, etc.

Moreover, in this way, your capacity to receive Christ's love - that unconditional, unlimited, not self-bound but god-bound love, will grow too.

It is hard to love another nation or people as if they are your own, or more than your own. But when you do, either in practice or in prayer, you allow the self-bound dimensions of love in your heart to die, and you will then come to love your own nation and people with God's transcendent love, NOT because they are precious to you, but because they are precious to God.

In sacrifice the self dies, but is then reborn to love more purely, more fully.

In Practice

Ultimately, God gave your your family, your people, your nation to you for you to love and give yourself to, but to be able to do this truly, and fully, your self-bound love needs to die and be reborn as God-bound love, where the love increases the further it extends (and not the other way around).

Your heart should naturally love your nation more than your family, but there are many individuals who ALSO are part of your nation, and unless you are a President, it is hard to love the whole nation in a practical way. But in your family, there is only one YOU to care for and love them.

The more your love becomes God-bound love, expanding love, the more God will be able to entrust your family, people, nation to you. God will recognize that you love these things, your family, your spouse, your community, your people or your nation, not because of your own attachment, but because of God's love for them.

How do you think God would feel? Don't you think God would feel fulfilled? Joyful? For a father, there is no greater joy than to see his son or daughter who emulates or embodies or even magnifies his own love for others.

This is the way to become someone that God truly treasures. Not because his love for you is greater than his love for your brother or friend, but because YOU become able to receive his love more deeply, more profoundly, and to resonate with him more, and return greater love to Him.

In my view and experience, this is the practical way to allow the self-bound nature die and connect with Christ's transcending love.

Remember: Whatever the date, every day is Christ's birthday. And yours, if you so choose. Merry Christ-mass.

Tonight, I watched Die Hard 2 with my boys. (yes!) I was inspired to write this post by the music at the end of the film: Finlandia.

This is My Song (Music: Finlandia by Jean Sibelius)

This is my song, O God of all the nations,

a song of peace for lands afar and mine;

this is my home, the country where my heart is;

here are my hopes, my dreams, my holy shrine:

but other hearts in other lands are beating

with hopes and dreams as true and high as mine.

My country’s skies are bluer than the ocean,

and sunlight beams on cloverleaf and pine;

but other lands have sunlight too, and clover,

and skies are everywhere as blue as mine:

O hear my song, thou God of all the nations,

a song of peace for their land and for mine.

Stanzas One and Two Lyrics by Lloyd Stone