Christmas Meditation

When we find that God has a new birth in our stable, do we bring our gifts and lay them before the infant? Do we start to work on cleaning out the stable so it will be a fit place for a baby to live? Do we bring the new baby into the main room of our inn and start to serve it? Do we send off the visitors who have filled up our inn so that there will be room for the baby and its family and so there will be room in which the child can grow? Or do we leave it in the stable and tend to it minimally. When we hit a tough patch do we bring out that spark of spirituality and ask God for help, and then when the trouble is past do we return it to the stable like any other beast of burden?

When we have heard the news of the birth and come to see, what do we do next? Do we return to our flocks, wondering and marveling but unchanged? Do we go back to our homes by a different route having given our one-time gifts? Or do we respond like the first apostles who left their nets and gave up their old lives and were taught and were changed?

Christ is called Emmanuel or God is With Us. How do we treat the God that is with us,
the God that we, as Quakers, claim is within each of us? How well do we listen to the voice or spirit which we claim is available to all as a Teacher and Guide?

I am being made aware these days how small and closed my heart is, how much I seek approval from others, how hard it is to turn my life over to God. I am learning how human I am. I also know that God is not done with me yet. I am still a work in progress.

Dear God,
Please open my ears that I may hear you.
Please strengthen me so that I may follow you.
Please heal me so that I may minister to the hurting.
Please open my eyes so that I may see you in all things.
Please open my heart so that I may love others as you love me.

Amen

A merry Christmas to everyone and may God be a living presence to all of you in the year to come.