Home for Christmas – week 2

Home for Christmas

Karon O’Ferrall has once again graced us with a beautiful artistic gift for the season at hand. Her visual rendering for Advent can be found on the wall frame in the hallway leading to Scott Chapel and the Weekday School.

The blue field on which candles, stars, and a manger appear suggests to me the universal context for the Incarnation. Christ was born in a specific place and in a particular time, but Christ is also born in every place and in every time, and is “all in all” (Colossians 3:11). Luke’s story of a child born in Bethlehem is localized, but also transcends time and space, allowing us to both imagine it across the centuries, and to experience it anew in our own time.

Perhaps to be “home for Christmas” is to grow more and more in the spiritual awareness that Christ is all in all. Christmas becomes an invitation to rekindle the sense of our belonging and blessing in the world—wherever we are, whatever our circumstance. To be known by God, claimed and loved by God, is our field of blue, our truest home.

This is one of the great mysteries of our faith—that Christ can become real to us at Christmas as though his birth has occurred in our very midst—in this season, in our church, in our homes, and in our hearts. May it be so.

O holy Child of Bethlehem! Descend to us we pray!

Cast out our sin and enter in, Be born in us today.

We hear the Christmas angels The great glad tidings tell;

O, come to us, abide with us, Our Lord Emmanuel!

Grace and peace.

Paul