Oh holy night, The stars are brightly shining, It is the night that our dear Savior’s birth
Everything is twinkling today in Winnipeg. Every store, many houses, and my balcony is twinkling with bright coloured lights. Lots of beauty as we approach the solstice. Here, on December 18th, the sun comes up at 8:22 and sets at 4:28, 9 hours of sunlight. But everywhere we have turned on the lights in the darkness. It is amazingly beautiful and full of wonder.
We don’t really know what season of the year Joseph traveled over 100 miles from Nazareth to Bethlehem. He traveled with his very pregnant wife, apparently riding a donkey. He had been ordered by the colonial master to prove who he was at this time in what we call a census. When they got to Bethlehem, his ancestral home, they were among the unhoused and Mary’s time had come. Can you imagine having to go to a barn with nothing but straw to use at the birth!?
And then after some odd encounters at the birth, did they get back home to Nazareth, or did they hear the news that the provincial colonial governor had ordered that their baby should be executed! Joseph gathered up the boy that wasn’t even his son and fled with his new wife as refugees to Egypt about 400 miles. We don’t really know if they had any contacts there to help them settle.
This is the old, old story and at least for some it is the reason for the season, for the twinkling lights everywhere. (Others have other reasons for the season).
I have been thinking a lot: No one ever promised me that I would only live in good times.
Certainly, the Holy Family did NOT live in good times. The world today is full of refugees in Gaza, the Ukraine, the rift valley in Africa, and from Burma. The US president is making many refugees, breaking-up families and flying people to places where they have no connection and dumping them there.
This story of the birth of Jesus is happening in awful times, then and for many now. I am so privileged because in this time when many are coping with terrible experiences, I have heat, food, a home and it appears a lot of security. What to make of this?
It makes me wonder if I have the eyes to see the light of hope that comes with this baby or am I blinded by the lights all around me that look so warm.
Jesus said he came so that the “the blind receive their sight, the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, the deaf hear, the dead are raised, and the poor have good news brought to them”. It is here that the hope of the birth is rooted.
I pray that this Christmas I will take off my blinders of privilege and see the world as it is, certainly as Jesus saw it and I will give what I don’t need, pick up my cross and follow.
Juniper needs to focus on this GOOD NEWS!!
I have taken some steps. Open my heart so that I might take the risk of the next steps into this GOOD NEWS
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Juniper oef