Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas! After the three long years of dealing with Covid and all that has done to us, merry Christmas. After this year of war in Ukraine, high inflation, covid tinged normality, merry Christmas. In the simmering confusion and stress, impatience and frustration, weariness and longing, merry Christmas. 

We have spent the last four weeks in Advent reflecting on the themes of living in hope - believing in spite of the evidence, and then watching the evidence change (Jim Wallis); centered in God’s peace – shalom - when all is as God desires for this world; knowing God’s love for all creation while nurturing the divine gift of joy.

For the great Franciscan theologian John Duns Scotus, this is what Christmas is all about. The coming of Christ was not to fix anything or to save anyone, but God’s first thought. Christmas is God being born in a food trough not in a palace. Shepherds are the first witnesses, not the powerful. This is a statement of God’s commitment to the poor, the broken, the broken hearted, the exploited and the forgotten. It is a statement of God’s deep love and commitment to God’s creation and to all who live in it. The Christmas story is a dangerous one filled with hope, love, joy and God’s covenant love. It is full of intrigue, and its participants bring all the confusion and weariness that we bring this year.

Christmas invites us to join the psalmist in singing God’s new song. I wonder where we have heard this new song over the last years. Where has that song touched us, revived us, changed us? Where have we joined that song offering hope, love, peace and joy?

Take some time to rest in this story and to give thanks for it’s ongoing effect in us and God’s world. Take some time to simply be grateful.

Merry Christmas. May you know God peace and love, hope and joy as we look to a new year and all it might hold.

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