When Lorraine was a girl, once upon a time not so very many years ago, when she was in church and the congregation sang “Visions of rapture now burst on my sight,” (from the hymn “Blessed Assurance”) she would sing instead, “Visions of sugar plums dance in my head.”

I think of this, probably because of the sugar plum tie to the holidays, especially during Advent. Kind of a strange connection, I know, but when it came to mind this year, I asked a few other people if they recall other such modifications of original texts of the Bible or hymns.

Here are a few that people shared with me.

One family calls the angel who announced Jesus' birth to the shepherds “Mark” because their four-year-old insists everyone sings. “Mark the herald angel sings.”

“We bring you gifts of gold, Frankenstein and myrrh.”

“Let the God of salivation be salted!”

“For Paul has sinned and fallen short of the glory of God.”

“Let the little children come to me, and forgive them not.”

“Him exalting, self a-basting...” (kind of a Thanksgiving turkey take on things!)

“Great is my faithfulness.”

We laugh at these because they’re funny. We know what children mean when they get it wrong. Children don’t know that what they’re saying isn’t right. They’re saying what they think everyone else is saying. (Well, I have a feeling Lorraine realized somewhere along the way that the sugar plum dance was just more fun to sing than whatever a rapture vision meant.) But for the most part, kids are saying what they think is right.

They’re not the only ones.

Even we adults don’t always get it right.

But do we realize it or do we, like children, believe that what we’re saying or thinking in every way is exactly just so, so right.

I’ll bet everyone loves love. Pastor Moody just preached about it in Hebrews. Philadelphia—love for the family. Philioxenia—love for the stranger. Standing with the persecuted. How we talk about marriage and how we should honor and elevate it.

Love may be the thing all of humanity, angry as we all seem these days, chases. Maybe we call it community or relationship or truth or peace; it is the thing we humans search for with relentless longing. In our searching, though, we may find that we stray from love itself. If not the word, well, the reality behind the word. We say the word, but sometimes it comes out wrong: leave instead of love or laugh instead of love or loathe instead of love. But we think we’re saying love.

We so easily wander, like a lamb, head down, sniffing something it smells and following that away from the flock, unaware that it is moving itself away from the rest of the sheep and the shepherd.

We can become so committed to the part we get wrong and wander unaware and drift away from the flock and the shepherd, self-a-basting ourselves in commitment to forgive them not and give the gift of Frankenstein as we sing “great is my faithfulness.” We say or think or do the wrong thing like children confusing salivation with salvation.

We don’t always put away childish ways even when we think we have.

Yet Jesus is always ready to leave the flock to rescue the lamb who has gone astray. He bears us on his shoulders and carries us back. He believes not in us, but in God, where the source of true hope and endurance comes, the One who helps us know the real love that is so opposite from what we humanly say or do when we wander off on our own.

This week we light the messenger candle. The message that a child had been born was broadcast in full angelic splendor to outcast shepherds watching their flocks. One of them might be named Mark, but probably not. Nevertheless, the message was not to fear, but instead, go. Go and see the baby sleeping where the animals eat, go and see the shepherd of love. Just go.

Bearing, believing, hoping, enduring. Jesus our rescuing good shepherd lives them out.

Love is patient and kind; love does not envy or boast; it is not arrogant or rude. It does not insist on its own way; it is not irritable or resentful; it does not rejoice at wrongdoing, but rejoices with the truth. Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.

This description Paul wrote to the Corinthians . . . what had he heard about the church in Corinth to prompt this? Which number was higher: the number of temples to idols like Aphrodite or the number of factious divisions in the church of Corinth? Maybe these believers were too much like us.

Love, like its king, never ends. It doesn’t give up. Maybe when we speak with one another and with those outside the faith we need to take a dose of humility to recognize that we will be surprised someday when we see more clearly all that we got wrong along the way. There have been times that I have backed away from talking about Jesus with someone out of fear of doing it wrong. But I’ve decided to just go for it. Somehow God has decided to use people like us instead of angels to be the messengers to the people around us.

We don’t know like God knows, but we do know the God who knows all things. And somehow Jesus uses us to offer his love.

Advent isn’t just looking back. It’s also looking forward to when all things become clear. And living and walking in love until that day. By the Spirit and the Word and with each other, we don’t have to wait even as we wait.

When I was a child, I spoke like a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I gave up childish ways. For now we see in a mirror dimly, but then face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I have been fully known. So now faith, hope, and love abide, these three; but the greatest of these is love.