You are currently browsing the monthly archive for January, 2009.
Benediction from inauguration of Barack Obama yesterday. Transcript here.
Now playing: Dear Mr President – Pink
Blessed art thou,
O Christmas Christ,
that thy cradle was so low
that shepherds,
poorest and simplest of earthly folk,
could yet kneel beside it,
and look level-eyed into the face of God. (Anon)
From a story told by a colleague working with churches in Latin America. One farmer said: ‘A single star for the well born and wealthy wise men compared with a whole host of glorious singing angels on the hillside to warm and welcome the poor and scruffy shepherds. That’s how we know how much God loves the poor. He gives them his very best.’
Written on 24th December 1974 by Oscar Romero: ‘No-one can celebrate Christmas without being truly poor. The self-sufficient, the proud, those who have no need even of God – for them there will be no Christmas. Only the poor, the hungry, those who need someone to come on their behalf, will have that someone. That someone is God, Emmanuel, God with us. Without poverty of spirit there can be no abundance of God.’
Seen for the first time 24th December 1968 from Apollo 8 as the spacecraft looked for possible future landing sites, and giving us something to marvel at, and something to worry about. ‘The most important environmental picture ever taken.’
Now playing Barry Louis Polisar: All I Want
From a longer letter on how Bethlehem is today, posted here.
The narrative of the Nativity has a universal resonance. It has proved the inspiration for great art. There are few people, whatever their age or status in life, immune to the story of a family, living in an occupied land, rejected by the powerful, ultimately finding sanctuary among the lowliest, and, through the birth of their child, opening a path of hope for the future. However, as a Jewish dissident, I find the silence of the majority of Christians about the situation in ‘The Little Town of Bethlehem’, particularly at Christmas, difficult to fathom.
In many ways the Israeli occupier is worse than the Romans. At least the wise men could reach the child. Today they would be turned back. No family would be able to get into the town without passing guards, checkpoints and walls.
Currently listening to Sarah McLachlan Song for a Winter’s Night
A Christmas Creed
I believe in Jesus Christ and in the beauty of the gospel begun in Bethlehem.
I believe in the one whose spirit glorified a little town: and whose spirit still brings music to people all over the world, in towns large and small.
I believe in the one for whom the crowded inn could find no room, and I confess that me heart still has insufficient room for all that He wants to do in my life today.
I believe in the one who the rulers of the earth ignored and the proud could never understand; whose life was among commoners, whose welcome came from the people of hungry hearts.
I beleive in the one who proclaimed the love of God to be invincible.
I believe in the one whose cradle was a mother’s arms, whose modest home in Nazareth had love for its only wealth, who looked at people and made them see what God’s love saw in them, who by love brought sinners back to purity, and lifted human weakness to meet the strength of God.
I confess my ever-lasting need of God: the need of forgiveness for our selfishness and greed, the need of new life for empty souls, the need of love for hearts grown cold.
I believe in God who gives the best of himself.
I believe in Jesus, the son of the living God, born in Bethlehem for me and for the world.
Amen
Said together in our church this Christmas.
Currently listening to Kate Rusby: Who Knows Where the Time Goes
