Emmanuel: God with us.

Loves furnace in a little room.

Forget not Trinity holy and glorious

That heaven’s bright prince came down to bestow on us

His love, as babe, into Mary’s fair womb

For nine months, he who is angels lord

Was hidden, love’s furnace, in a little room

Humbler than all, who all adored.

A pure lamb, he stole down to earth

To free us from our sin so blind .

No city home will shield his birth

His mother a stable for bed must find;

There poorest of the poor she lay

Nor wine nor meat for hungers sting

In the rude confines of the cattle bay

Where God was born apostle’s king.

Cold and exile He did not scorn

In the donkey’s manger that holy morn.

Tadg Gaelach O Suilleabhain.

 Time zero, matter zero, energy zero, a darkness of nothing.

Yet there was everything, an eternal caring community of mutual worship and love.

A pent-up furnace of beauty and joyful creativity, waiting to pour themselves into the dark chaotic meaningless nothingness.

The loving shout of command went out. Light poured into darkness. Rainbow colours of joy creating and illuminating our dark world.

The dark nothingness hated the light, but the light was joyfully triumphant.

So, this light created every one of us but we did not have the loving enlightening knowledge of this light in our hearts, many people had had glimpses; many prophets right up to the time of John the Baptist, but we were still living in the oppressive darkness, unaware of the light.

So that furnace of creative love was hidden as a tiny embryo in Mary’s womb.  We carried on oblivious to the miracle of uncreated light, living and breathing amongst us. We were unaware of the person of the creator, living in the world that he had created.

He was living in our street, just down our road and we were too busy and preoccupied to notice He was there.

Quieten your heart this Christmas you may hear him knocking on your door wanting to come in, to your life, demanding your heart, reclaiming the life he created to fill it with peace love and light.

Listen carefully He is here, even now.

 John 1 paraphrase

I wish everyone reading this blog a very blessed, peaceful and Christ filled Christmas

Advent:waiting to welcome the King

We believe in the "blasphemous" glory of Immanuel; ‘infinity dwindled to infancy’, as the poet once said. We believe in omnipotence surrendering to incontinence, the name above every other name rumoured to be illegitimate. We believe that God’s eternal Word once squealed like a baby and, when eventually he learned to speak, it was with a regional accent. The Creator of the cosmos made tables and presumably he made them badly at first. The Holy One of Israel got dirt in the creases of his hands. Here is our God – the Sovereign who ‘emptied himself out into the nature of a man’,

Greig, Pete. Dirty Glory: Go Where Your Best Prayers Take You (Red Moon Chronicles #2) (p. 3). Hodder & Stoughton. Kindle Edition.

Today we changed the drapes at Southover Trinity. For a month they will be purple, the same colour as for Lent. Advent is a wonderful time when we celebrate the coming of Christ. Not just as a baby in a manger, but as the glorious coming king when he will fully come into His kingdom; to reign over a renewed  heaven and earth, with all His gathered people .  It is the time for waiting with expectancy for the coming of the Lord Jesus into our hearts as Lord and King. Not a time for making dizzy preparations for the commercial orgy of spending and overconsumption which it has become in our land.

As the message version of John 1:14 says," the word became flesh and moved into our neighbourhood". So, the same God who got His hands dirty tenderly kneading clay and forming humankind, played in the mud around the well, making mud-pies with His little friends. The same hands that were ingrained with the toil of the carpenter’s shop, made soil into mud to open the eyes of a blind man.  The same hands which broke bread and blessed wine, were blooded and marred by cruel nails which tore into them.   

As we contemplate the two advents of Jesus we see a person who is fully human as well as fully God. Someone who gets His hands dirty in the messiness of our lives and problems. Someone who is always present, always loving, always ready to accept us as we are, always ready to come into the middle of our lives, to save and heal us. He doesn’t just want to come and live in our neighbourhood, He wants to come as our intimate friend.

We do not just celebrate Jesus as a little baby who came in some distant past or a coming glorious king who comes in some undisclosed future; but a king who is here now, wanting to bring his loving burning presence into the very centre of our hearts and lives as our Saviour and King.    

My personal prayer is for more of Jesus in my own life. Without Christ I am powerless to be loving and kind. Powerless to make a difference in the lives of those I meet,

So let us each spend time this Advent in penitence for the times when we have pushed Christ to the edge of our lives and pursued our own desires, wanting to walk our own path rather than walking in Christ’s footsteps.

This Christmas may we know the true meaning of Emmanuel, Christ with us and Christ in us.