In the quiet corners of our world

Our God, we live with the temptation to make of Christmas
something soft and white and cuddly like a Santa bear:
to make it something warm and gentle,
to use words like tender and mild,
to trivialize it.

But it is in the presence of a great and gripping darkness
that has clasped our world and our worn hearts,
in the presence of the shadow of death
from which there is no escape,
that the Christ is born —
and this, not the other,
is the good news.

For in this child
you pierce the gloom,
you rout the forces of evil,
and split asunder the weight of death.

And this you do in the quiet corners of our world:
Bethlehem, Nazareth,
Golgotha,
here;

In simplicity,
in poverty,
in humility.

Our God, as in this season of goodwill we look again
into the faces of our world,
bring us to the ordinary miracle
of the incarnation:

That the eyes of our soul, so easily blinkered,
and the knowing of our minds, so readily manacled,
may be open to the liberation and light,
the faith and the hope of the coming
of the Christ.

Amen

 

from Be Our Freedom Lord | Responsive Prayers and Readings for Contemporary Worship
editor: Terry C. Falla