I love this Irish Christmas blessing that I found a couple of years ago and thought that it needed to be coupled with this wonderfully Irish Christmas song. Enjoy and have a wonderful and blessed Christmas.
Seattle skylight – Craig Goodwin http://craiggoodwinphoto.com Used with permission.
by Gil George
As I prepare for the coming of Christmas I have been reflecting on John 1: 9-14:
The true light, which enlightens everyone, was coming into the world. 1He was in the world, and the world came into being through him; yet the world did not know him. He came to what was his own, and his own people did not accept him. But to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God, who were born, not of blood or of the will of the flesh or of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and lived among us, and we have seen his glory, the glory as of a father’s only son, full of grace and truth.
The true light was coming and the Light’s own people did not recognize him. This is a serious check for us who consider ourselves followers of Jesus. Are there ways we ourselves are not recognizing the light which even now breaks into the world. This is the conviction that rests heavily on me now as I witness the sad state of the world around me. I wonder that I, like the people of Israel, am focusing so much on the hurts around me that I am missing the presence of Jesus. As I write this my daughter is working on her schoolwork, sent home for her to work on while she fights an e-coli infection. As I write this the news plays the latest tragedies in the world, and I am overwhelmed with my own senses of loss in terms of my relationship to the Church. I am missing Jesus because I am not looking for him, I am just looking for a way through. How often do I not take the time to look around me for the presence of the light, or only as a solution to the problems of the day?
But the Word became flesh and dwells among us, and longs for some time to be with us. As this season progresses and we move through times of hope and hopelessness, faith and doubt, joy and despair, peace and strife, let us resolve to stop and lean into the arms of the Light so that we might find the small hopes hiding in hopeless situations, the faith that only comes through expressed doubt, the joy that comes with light in the middle of dark despair, and the peace which surpasses understanding in times of strife. These come paradoxically, not because we work for them, but as gifts that flow from the presence of Jesus.
Lord, I come to you seeking the gift of your presence. Open my eyes to see where you are already at work around me and in me. Help me lean into and recognize your in-breaking light. Amen
Here is a beautiful Christmas creed to reflect on as we approach Christmas. I don’t know who wrote it but if you can help would love to find out.
I believe in Jesus Christ and in the beauty of the gospel begun in Bethlehem.
I believe in the one whose spirit glorified a little town;
and whose spirit still brings music to persons all over the world,
in towns both large and small.
I believe in the one for whom the crowded inn could find no room,
and I confess that my heart still sometimes wants to exclude Christ from my life today.
I believe in the one whom the rulers of the earth ignored
and the proud could never understand;
whose life was among common people,
whose welcome came from persons of hungry hearts.
I believe in the one who proclaimed the love of God to be invincible:
I believe in the one whose cradle was a mother’s arms,
whose modest home in Nazareth had love for its only wealth,
who looked at persons and made them see what God’s love saw in them,
who by love brought sinners back to purity,
and lifted human weakness up to meet the strength of God.
I confess my ever-lasting need of God:
The need of forgiveness for our selfishness and greed,
the need of new life for empty souls, the need of love for hearts grown cold.
I believe in God who gives us the best of himself.
I believe in Jesus, the son of the living
God, born in Bethlehem this night, for me and for the world.
Oops – I posted this by mistake – it should be part of the post Meditation Monday – Conceive in Us Your Wholeness Lord but since several people have already liked and shared the post I have decided to leave it. I hope you will explore the complete post though.
So the Word became human and made his home among us. He was full of unfailing love and faithfulness. And we have seen his glory, the glory of the Father’s one and only Son. (John 1:14 The Voice)
God’s son made his home among us, yet he did not come as an adult but as a child. Jesus came fully formed but not fully grown. He was fully God yet that image of God within him was not yet fully realized. He spent years being nurtured by his mother and father. He was shaped by the circumstances of his culture and of his world.
What is your response?
Jesus came fully formed but not fully realized – the image of God within him was not fully manifested for many years. And that I suspect is the way God intends it to be.
Think back over your own life. What has been birthed in you in embryonic form that God is slowly growing towards maturity? What new seeds would you like to plant this Christmas season?
The Visitation – James Janknegt
The image of God is birthed within all of us – not in fully maturity but in embryonic form. It grows slowly, first nurtured by mother and father, by family and friends, then by society and culture as God slowly grows it towards maturity.
I wonder how much Jesus’ sensitivity to the plight of women was shaped by the struggles his own mother endured. Was he ostracized because of his birth? Was his mother gossiped about behind her back?
Perhaps his championing of the poor and the marginalized was prompted in part by his own marginalization. Galileans were not well loved by those in Jerusalem. Nathanael’s exclamation Can anything good come from Nazareth? in John 1:46 was indicative of society’s attitude towards Galileans.
What is your response?
Think back over the struggles of your growing up years. Were you abused, or mistreated? Did you struggle with inferiority because of lack of skills, or because of your ethnic background? In what ways has God shaped the divine image within you through the challenges you have faced in your life? How has God sensitized you to the challenges of our world through your interactions with the marginalized and the abandoned?
Spend time reflecting on this and ofter up a prayer of gratitude for the ways God has birthed and grown to maturity that divine image within you, just as God did within Jesus.
Watch the video. What feelings does it stir within you? What lies within you in embryonic form that God wants to grow to maturity?
When your waking thought is ‘I don’t want to live this day’, you know you’re off the map that this world gives, a far cry indeed from the perfection and wonder of shiny present giving and cosy family gatherings, those images that bombard us from every tv, storefront, magazine and web page at this time of year.
Sadly, you also know you’re off the map the mainstream Church provides. Even if you’ve managed to get past the heritage of English Victoriana or the bustle of Bethlehem Square and St Peter’s Square to find an ancient tradition that speaks of quiet and presence, even then, the desolate experience of emptiness remains at such odds with the insistence of Advent truths: new birth and the coming of the One who breaks in again, here and now, today.
Such desolation brings forth the loneliest wail in the universe.
I feel utterly alone, and cut off from any experience of God.
And it does not help at that moment to know that others have also woken this day with the same voice shouting in their mind.
My grief at being dragged into the pain the daylight brings is not something I thank a so-called-God for.
I am told I must get up and face this day. Quelling the rebel yell of my ‘why?’, I obey and swim to some sort of surface, direct myself towards where I am told the light is.
And I remain numb, stumbling through whatever tasks the hours ahead bring, counting down the minutes until I am ‘allowed’ to find escape into the non-being of sleep, the nearest equivalent to death I can find.
Except, of course, that sleep is an elusive gift at these times of deep sadness. And I lie awake through the long reaches of the night, unsuccessful in my attempts to quiet my sobbing brain or find a position to comfort and cocoon my searing aching body. At long last I fall into an uneasy snooze, only to be woken, not an hour later, by the same waking thought: ‘I don’t want to live this day.’
This story has characterised great swathes of my last twenty five years. This waking thought occurred to me again only yesterday.
And yet, somehow, I am still alive to write this. I am living those days, enduring, getting through, waiting them out. Why? Because, somehow, I cling to the belief that this darkness, this cold numbness, this cotton wool veil that clouds and distorts my vision, is not the whole story.
The poets, the painters, the prophets tell me so. And by an act of will that grinds itself out from the base of my being, (that I dumbly glimpse has nothing to do with my feeble strength and everything to do with Grace), I choose to believe them.
And what do they say? As if with one breath: ‘Turn: and face the darkness’. There is no escape, the pain cannot be eluded, so turn, turn and look at what it is that pursues you; and see it true, for there you will find your healing. And their next breath holds the promise: this darkness you look into will not overwhelm you; it too, is not the whole story, but this is where you need to start.
And so I begin again. Deliberately choosing to enter into the place of feeling broken, hurt and exhausted, deliberately opening myself up to exploring the sense of the absence of God, deliberately welcoming the tears as they stream, in the knowledge it is all for my healing. These tears are a gift of joy in the wilderness say the Desert Fathers and Mothers, and again, I choose to believe them, opening my heart to that possibility at the very same time my mind screams this is pure folly.
Time and again I practice: practice being present to the moment that feels like an absence – a universal hole in the fabric of time and space itself – trusting that beyond my conscious knowing, this very same moment is filled with the fragrance of holiness that ushers forth Presence.
Time and again I practice: practice being silent, enduring the silence, quieting my inner wailing, relaxing my straining muscles seeking to hear the beckoning invitation of Love, God-with-us.
Time and again I practice: leaning into the shadows because their very existence speaks paradoxically of the Light, to be revealed at a time not of my choosing, assured of its coming if I will but sit with it and wait in the darkness.
In trust, in obedience, in fear, in courage, healing will come.
This is the Light of the World: that our God desires only our full wellness and our flourishing in abundance. Knowledge of this wondrous truth brings freedom then from all of the tugging into destruction my mind can create. God longs for us to receive the gift of this freedom anew day by day.
Daily, God invites us into a relationship with darkness to find the Light. As Tom Wright says, ”Jesus invites us to walk ahead into the darkness and discover that it, too, belongs to God.”
Knowing this allows me to live with whatever forms my illness may take. Knowing this helps me live just one day more in the hope that the living Light within me will spill over towards all those I encounter this day, for their growth and healing, and mine.
What is it about December that makes us so weary?
It’s like all the months behind are pushing us forward, until we’re falling, fallen over…
What is it about Christmas that makes us so lonely?
As though all the losses have compounded until we’re overloaded….
What is it about this time of year that brings us to our knees?
Is it because we’re still aware of so much to achieve?
Or is it because we are aware of all that we didn’t do right?
And we’re feeling just too weak to try and rectify it,
to keep up the endless fight.
Yet what if at this time of year, we’re meant to fall to our knees?
Meant to acknowledge what we’ve lost, and what we still hope to see?
Meant to fall to the ground and allow Christmas to come to where we are?
Allow Him to extend to us His grace, which we don’t have to ‘reach’ to achieve?
What if is okay to fear the year ahead, and to wonder when certainty might reappear?
Wonder when conflicts will finally ease, and when our struggles might start to make sense?
Maybe we’re meant to drop it all when we fall? Into hands which can hold it all – and us as well.
Perhaps we confuse His strength with our own flimsy might? Maybe it’s only His strength alone, sufficient for our brokenness,
which will win this fight.
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