I got a letter today from my sponsored child, Stephen, who lives in Kenya. It’s upsetting to get a letter like this when you are worried about someone. All I know for sure is what I have read on CNN about the turmoil in that country, and that Compassion lists his center as one of [...]
Categories: God
(That I’m still a man in need of a savior.) I happen to be a fairly capable person. I can do things and take care of things and figure things out. Sometimes I want to play the princess, to be rescued, but I am more likely to be in the midst of figuring out the [...]
Categories: God
Thank you, God, for being born, You who first invented birth (Universe, galaxies, the earth). When your world was tired & worn You came laughing on the morn. Thank you, most amazing Word For your silence in the womb Where there was so little room Yet the still small voice was heard Throughout a planet [...]
Categories: God
The inn was full. When Joseph knocked, his wife was already in labour; there was no room even for compassion. Until the barn was offered. That was the precipitating factor. A child was born, and the pattern changed forever, the cosmos shaken with that silent explosion. -Madeleine L’Engle — It is happening now. It is [...]
Categories: God
O come, O come Emmanuel within this fragile vessel here to dwell. O Child conceived by heaven’s power give me thy strength: it is the hour. O come, thou Wisdom from on high; like any babe at life you cry; for me, like any mother, birth was hard, O light of earth. O come, O [...]
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Winter solstice, when the sun seems to stand still in heaven, watching for the Baby to be born. -Luci Shaw — “Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening” Whose woods these are I think I know. His house is in the village, though; He will not see me stopping here To watch his woods fill [...]
Categories: God
Last night at a Christmas festival, I heard a choir sing, in Latin, Gabrielli’s O Magnum Mysterium: “O greatest of mysteries and O most wonderful sacrament, Jesus lying there in the manger for all creatures to gaze upon. O blessed virgin, whose womb was deemed worthy of bearing Christ, the Lord Jesus. Alleluia!” An intense [...]
Categories: God
I know not all of that which I contain. I’m small; I’m young; I fear the pain. All is surprise: I am to be a mother. That Holy Thing within me and no other is Heaven’s King whose lovely Love will reign. My pain, his gaining my eternal gain my fragile body holds Creation’s Light; [...]
Categories: God
Very different from the simple shepherds were the wise men who came from three different parts of the globe, a long journey that must have taken them well over a year. They were serious scholars who studied the heavens and the movement of the heavenly bodies. They were both astronomers and astrologers, and we have [...]
Categories: God
And the angel told her, “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High shall overshadow you. And the Holy Thing which shall be born of you shall be called the Son of God.” What an amazing, what an impossible message the angel brought to a young girl! But Mary [...]
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Cribb’d, cabined, and confined within the contours of a human infant. The infinite defined by the finite? The Creator of all life thirsty and abandoned? Why would he do such a thing? Aren’t there easier and better ways for God to redeem his fallen creatures? And what good did it all do? The heart of [...]
Categories: God
Obedience is an unpopular word nowadays, but the artist must be obedient to the work, whether it be a symphony, a painting, or a story for a small child. I believe that each work of art, whether it is a work of great genius, or something very small, comes to the artist and says, “Here [...]
Categories: God
It was from Joseph first I learned of love. Like me he was dismayed. How easily he could have turned me from his house; but, unafraid, he put me not away from him (O God-sent angel, pray for him). Thus through his love was Love obeyed. The Child’s first cry came like a bell: God’s [...]
He came, quietly impossible, Out of a young girl’s womb, A love as amazingly marvelous As his bursting from the tomb. The child was fully human, This child was wholly God. The hands of All Love fashioned him Of mortal flesh and bone and blood, The ordinary so extraordinary The stars shook in the sky [...]
Categories: God
This birth has death forevermore confused. That God, the holy & immortal one Should take on mortal flesh, should be abused, Be killed–oh, how could such a thing be done? What does this death then do to death? Death grasps the holy body of the Lord, Crushes the mortal flesh, lets side be gored– Oh, [...]
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As I grow older I get surer Man’s heart is colder, His life no purer. As I grow steadily More austere I come less readily To Christmas each year. I can’t keep taking Without a thought Forced merrymaking And presents bought In crowds jostling. Alas, there’s naught In empty wassailing Where oblivion’s sought. Oh, I’d [...]
Categories: God
So we rejoice in the mystery of this tiny baby. We give presents to each other as reminders of his great gift of himself to us. We trim the Christmas tree, although the Christmas tree was not originally a Christian symbol, but came out of northern Europe and the worship of different gods. But any [...]
Categories: God
This time of the year the new-born child is everywhere planted in madonnas’ arms hay mows, stables, in palaces or farms, or quaintly, under snowed gables, gothic angular or baroque plump, naked or elaborately swathed, encircled by Della Robbia wreaths, garnished with whimsical partridges and pears, drummers and drums, lit by oversize stars, partnered with [...]
Categories: God
On the eighth day after Jesus’ birth a prophecy laced with further torment was spoken to Mary: “A sword will pierce your own soul”–a pain for her to ponder and dread for over thirty years. During that waiting time, Jesus directed some of his hardest sayings to his gentle mother–words that must have wounded. But [...]
Categories: God
He did not wait till the world was ready, till men and nations were at peace. He came when the Heavens were unsteady, and prisoners cried out for release. He did not wait for the perfect time. He came when the need was deep and great. He died with sinners in all their grime, turned [...]
Categories: God