Grace and peace to you
Christmas is about Jesus. And Jesus is about the Utterly-Loving-Creator-God’s determined desire for all of creation to know that we are utterly loved.
Like Edwin Markham’s poem: Outwitted
He drew a circle that shut me out –
Heretic, rebel, a thing to flout,
But love and I had the wit to win:
We drew a circle that took him in.
Christmas is God’s outwitting move – drawing the largest of circles that take us in. I hope that each and every one of us will know God’s loving encirclement today.
In this loving encirclement healing resides.
Knowing we live and move and have our being in God’s circle of love liberates us from the fear to love and be loved. And when all is said and done – to love and be loved is what each of us is born for.
We love because we have first been loved. We literally have to be loved into loving. This is the mission of Jesus: to love us into loving.
“Accepting Jesus” means accepting that we are loved…and thus lovable. We are saved from ourselves. “Following Jesus” means loving others as we have been loved…and thus loving. We are saved for others…especially those the world considers unlovable.
In loving encirclement,
Alan
Helpless God – help us
Helpless God as child and crucified,
laid in a cradle and cradled on a cross:
help us discern in your submission
not weakness but the passionate work of love.
You tell us you are poor in every age:
naked, hungry, and without a home.
Help us in your poor cradle of today
to see what is of you and what is not:
that suffering does not often save,
or helplessness redeem our sorry lives.
And so forbid us sing when we should weep.
Yet come to us and all of ours,
O child of Mary and of God,
in all the poor who saw you first,
and laughed with you, and heard you well.
And now run back from nowhere with their news,
to plant their seeds of hope in our dry ground.
~ Michael H. Taylor
