A Christmas Reflection
Who are you O God? This dark, weary world is searching for you, waiting for your arrival.
Will we recognize you when You come?
You who made the heavens and the earth and all that is within them.
How can the Maker become that which is made, unless the Maker and the made are not simply a static person but a movement, an activity, summed up in the words: God is love (1 John 4:8). For what is love but a doing, a making, a moving together towards an infinite horizon of life?
A God-making-mattering world where darkness holds the light, and night is constantly preparing for day.
You are forever being born, O God!
The whole universe story is a Christmas story.
Now Jesus is a story within the story.
Born to a young, unwed mother in a dark, out-of-way place, with nothing more than a poor piece of cloth to wrap his fragile flesh in a bundle.
Fear, uncertainty, darkness, surprise—how could Mary and Joseph have known all that the future would hold?
The birth of you, O God, is a birth in darkness, a birth in uncertainty, a birth in love. And you are perfectly at home with the chaos of the unknown, the fear of the present moment, the uncertainty of darkness.
Then—as now—You are here and You are love, and all we are asked to do is to say “yes” to this present moment of life.
“Yes” to your hidden and inscrutable ways;
“Yes” to your at-homeness with incompleteness;
“Yes” to your power of love, which is a big love-squeeze, even in the many failures and disappointments of our lives.
For when we can say, “yes,” we surrender to your infinite love,
a love which sustains the beats of our hearts, the breadths of our fearful moments,
the joy of sharing life with family and friends.
When we can say “yes,” we lean into your ever-expansive heart of love;
When we can say “yes,” without bartering or demands, a “yes” of trust,
Then whatever happens will be joyous, whatever unfolds will lead to goodness,
For in this “yes” of love, Jesus is born.
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Image: “Christmas Night”, Paul Gauguin, 1894
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