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And now God is with usWednesday, December 26, 2012
Psalm 31:6-8, 17 Things will heat up soon enough. Herod will hear of Jesus, and the angel will once again come to the Holy Family. "Go south to Egypt. Go tonight." They went; they were becoming accustomed to spiritual direction. And for now? "Mary kept all these things, and pondered them in her heart." There's no record of how Joseph spent these days. But there's a remarkable unhurriedness in the story. At least it's remarkable to me, a long-standing member of the efficient get-it-down tribe of type A Americans. On Christmas Eve my brother-in-law Father Jim Cravens officiated our local Episcopal service. He hearkened back to the first message given by Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom in 1957. (http://www.royal.gov.uk/ImagesandBroadcasts/TheQueensChristmasBroadcasts/ChristmasBroadcasts/ChristmasBroadcast1957.aspx) "It has always been easy to hate and destroy," she said. "To build and to cherish is much more difficult." We do this "building" with assurance that God is With Us. There is never any hurry then, and never any trouble. Emmanuel has come. Jim went on to say, "The incarnation is a radical new medium, and during these intervening twenty centuries there has been no new technology to render the message of the incarnation obsolete." Jesus' birth changes the way we are together - God and us. As Job said, "My ears had heard of you, but now my eyes have seen you." In the last moments of his life, Stephen cried out, "I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing on the right hand of God." And, indeed, Lord, we hear you too. Jesus said to his disciples, and to us, "Do not worry about how you are to speak or what you are to say. You will be given at that moment what you are to say. For it will not be you who speak, but the Spirit of your Father speaking through you" (Matt 10:19-20). God, you are as close as my next thought, my next breath. You are here, and you will always be with us, even to the end of the world. |
The Christmas story ends quietly. The animals return to their stalls, the shepherds return to their sheep, the magi don't come for awhile. There are Mary and Joseph, and the babe. Joseph does his business with the Roman census.