J. Barrie Shepherd – faithful disciple, Presbyterian pastor, poet, and Scotsman…among other things – has authored a wonderful series of Advent meditations, written in the form of prayers, in the book A Child Is Born. I find his reflection on the Christmas story offered in the Gospel of Luke (Luke 2.1-20) to say everything I would want to speak to you here on the eve of another Christmas celebration…so I share it below.
My prayer for you, and for me, and for all of God’s children, in this expectant season of new possibilities, is that we allow the love of God to fill us to overflowing…that in love, and with love, and through love…we may join Jesus in changing the world!
Merry Christmas,
Pastor Bill
“For all the marvel of these blessed, cherished, and well-rounded verses of Saint Luke; for all the magic that I never fail to feel when I hear them read aloud in church on Christmas Eve; they tell, at least until the angels come upon the scene, of totally mundane and commonplace events.”
“New taxes may be newsworthy, but they are hardly information one would hand down over centuries. A weary couple traveling far from home because of government regulations, even an expectant girl without a place to lay her head, these are not the stuff one might expect to find immortalized. And this birthing of a first-born son, the wrapping him in covers, the laying of him in a feed box for a bed: this has happened since the birth of time itself.”
“Death and taxes, birth and taxes, things one can be sure of, can rely on to endure upon this human scene… Why do we make such a fuss about it all, Lord? What is there in these every day events to justify their annual remembering, rehearsal, repetition?”
“Might it be that in the very ordinariness of your Son’s birth there lies the first disclosure of his message, of the great good news? Might it be, this very night, that you are telling me to look for meaning, mystery, and miracle right here inside the matter-of-fact problems, pains, potentials that make up the daily round?”
“I pray this may be so, Lord God, because the miracle of Christmas that I need will not be found in far-off Bethlehem, or even on the decorated altar of the church, but in the birth of hope and trust and love deep in my ordinary heart. Amen.”
J. Barrie Shepherd, A Child Is Born; The Westminster Press, 1988.
