At Christmas

I post this poem every year because in my mind it best describes the reason Jesus came. This celebration is about God’s gift of Himself to us; about the child that grew to manhood, willingly gave his life in our place, then rose from the dead to demonstrate he’d defeated not only sin but death itself.

Christianity isn’t self-help, moralizing, or perfunctory piety. (Yes, people reduce it to that, but those are parodies.) In Jesus Christ is forgiveness of sins, transformation of heart, redemption of the very core of who and what you are. It’s life. Eternal life.

Accepting it is radical. It means change – sometimes confusing, uncomfortable, inconvenient change – but most remarkable of all is that it’s real and it’s free. Jesus lives.

And He loves you. Really.

Let the Stable Still Astonish

Let the stable still astonish:
Straw- dirt floor, dull eyes, dusty flanks of donkeys, oxen;
Crumbling, crooked walls; No bed to carry that pain.

And then the child –
Rag-wrapped, laid to cry in a trough.
Who would have chosen this?
Who would have said:
“Yes, Let the God of all
the heavens and earth
be born here, in this place”?

Who but the same God who stands in the darker, fouler rooms of our hearts and says,
“Yes, Let the God of Heaven and Earth be born here – in this place.

May God bless you and keep you all in the new year, and make you an instrument of His Courage, Compassion, and Grace.

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