“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in
the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work of
Christmas begins: to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people, to make music in the
heart.”
Howard
Thurman
_________________________________________
It is somehow fitting that Christmas morning
Started foggy and cold
It is also fitting that the sun broke through
And flooded the frozen forest
With gold
That is the way Christmas works
Christmas is Love, Light, Laughter
Breaking into the grayness of life
Breaking through the hate
And the fear
The anger
Breaking through all that darkness
And bringing us
Something new
You will hear some cry
Jesus is the reason for the season (and of course Jesus
is)
You will hear some cry
Jesus was born to die
Funny how even when God comes
Breaking all the rules
Emptying the God self
To be among us
We still want to go to the old
We still want to make it all a transaction
God can only love us if Jesus dies
We have to respond a certain way, mouthing certain
phrases
Believing certain things
In order to be saved from eternal conscious torment
Have we learned nothing from Christmas?
Have we learned nothing from Jesus
The Jesus way is radically non transactional
That is why so many will never really get it
(although they will try, and I expect God will honor
that, because that is how God is)
That is why certain leaders
Who understand nothing but “I win you lose”
Who are totally committed to quid pro quo
Will never “get Jesus”
Here is Christmas
Distilled down to its basics
Jesus came, lived, and died to show us the possibilities,
to show us what love can do,
to show us a new (non transactional) way of doing life.
Jesus came to show that God invests in us
In our world
God loves us
Unconditionally
God hopes we respond in love
God hopes his love “rubs off” on us
And makes us people who love
But the bottom line
God loves us
There is no transaction here
There is only grace
And our grateful response to grace
Which changes everything
We can live in grace and not change (sadly)
But we miss out on so much
We miss out on love
We miss out on generosity
We miss out on joy
We miss out on peace
We can live in grace and not change
Or we can live in grace
And like the Magi, go home another way
We can live life immersed in love
Permeated with love
Giving love
Without demands
Without requirements
Just
Because
It is the God thing to do
So in the end it doesn’t matter
What color a person is
What sexual orientation
What nationality
What faith
It doesn’t matter if they have uttered the proper
formulas
Or if they have earned, anything
This is the message of Christmas
This is the truth, that underlies it all
“When the song of the angels is stilled, when the star in
the sky is gone,
when the kings and princes are home,
when the shepherds are back with their flocks, the work
of Christmas begins:
to find the lost,
to heal the broken,
to feed the hungry,
to release the prisoner,
to rebuild the nations,
to bring peace among the people, to make music in the
heart.”
Merry Christmas
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