Come to the manger all you sweet wanderers with disconnected memories and synapses that do not quite link up any more, like frayed cables lashing blindly in the wind. Come and worship the one newly born from and to wholeness. Where your ends do not meet he will find you, somewhere in the middle. All will come flooding back to your heart, if not your mind. Remembering is now done in the stillness of your soul and the integrity of ideas does not matter here.
Come and sit by the crib, all you dear and desperate ones, clinging to difficult pasts or fragments of yourself because it is all you have to go on in the jigsaw of life. The unknowing and the heart-breaking urgency to belong somewhere, anywhere, will come to rest here. This place is your storm harbour, and your safety. Find your identity here, sat on sacred ground, be it cold and stony. He knows who you are, even when you do not.
Come, blessed hearts, to the stable, all you anxious and traumatised, troubled and sobbing. Here is the Prince of your Peace, bring him all you have, the flashbacks and the anger, the deep desire to forgive and forget the terrible. The longing to have a future free from angst. Come weeping and gnashing and find your soothing lullaby here in a cradle of heaven’s heart.
Come near, you beloved, to the soft golden straw, you unsure of your own senses, hearing the voices and the commands of harm and horror. The fog of uncertainty surrounds and taints all things and the promptings are powerful, but here in the love-light you will see the mist clearly dissipate, hear the dark declarations silenced this quiet night. For the Good Shepherd sleeps and softly gurgles here, and you will know his voice as it quells those other tides.
Come now, the cherished, drawn to the light of the candles, you claimed forgotten, clenched and exhausted, abandoned by sleep and joy, left dwelling in dark clouds and unable to feel your way to any happy thought. Despair and disappointment have long been your companions, their constancy too strong to fight and too hard to bear. This is the home of hope, this small and perfect beginning. The glow can start again for us all, the flame rekindled.
Come all you treasured edge-dwellers, to Bethlehem, you precious peerers around corners, you unworthy ones who cringe and cower if someone notices your difference, your bare brokenness. Do not cover your eyes here or hide your shape that appears so unseemly to your skewed vision. Here is the reflection of your true self that is able to look at its image and smile. This tiny form contains you as beloved and acceptance is yours to receive.
We all come, we scarred and smashed, we broken and battered, we weary and wounded. We adored. There is miraculously room for all to gaze and know, in one awestruck moment of seeing, that this baby boy is our centre, the middle of all things, the stone dropped in the centre of the ocean of the universe, rippling out in waves of wonder that will captivate us and draw us in to love.
© Keren Dibbens-Wyatt 2014
Keren Dibbens-Wyatt is a writer with a passion for prayer, church unity and the edification of women. She finds her joy in God’s colours, creatures and stories and attempts to share it with others through her work.
Links: website http://www.stillwatersministries.co.uk/
Blogs: http://gardenofgodsheart.wordpress.com
http://jellyjots.blogspot.co.uk/
Or connect with Keren on facebook https://www.facebook.com/KerenDibbensWyatt
You can download Keren’s free ebook “Christian Prayers for the World” on ibooks, Lulu or Kindle. Christian Prayers for the World
4 comments
How fabulous to read this. Keren is obviously a very talented writer with a real heart for hearing and obeying God. Bless her for this work I am sure she will help many.
This is sheer brilliance. Thank you so much Keren.
You are welcome, Kate, so thrilled you liked it.
Thank you Keren, for especially welcoming the stigmatized, and the stigmatized parts of many of us we don’t want to admit. Such compassion from God’s heart and your heart.