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2024
O little town of BethlehemFriday, December 24, 2010
Luke 1:78-79 There are so many ways to spend Christmas Eve. Listening for baby Jesus being born is one of the best of them. Just sit quietly, waiting in the silence to hear a tiny cry. I know that cry resounds through the ages, and I listen all the harder for it. Soon after December 7, 1941 Winston Churchill, at great personal risk, crossed the Atlantic in secret to visit with Franklin Roosevelt. America was entering the war in Europe after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Churchill was not home for Christmas that year. David McCullough tells a bit of the story of their meeting, and Charles Osgood documents his telling: http://www.westwoodone.com/pg/jsp/osgood/transcript.jsp?pid=31013 After the choir sings its last note and the organ fades into silence, there is only the sound of the stars. I would like to take a midnight walk toward Mary and Joseph, and the shepherds, and the angels. I could watch my breath freeze in the air, and listen for Jesus. He has indeed been born. On this night, filled with unimaginable light, it is so easy to believe. And his cry breaks my heart right open. As Parker Palmer writes in A Hidden Wholeness, "This small, tight fist of a thing called my heart can break open into greater capacity to hold more of my own and the world's suffering and joy, despair and hope." O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie. Above thy deep and dreamless sleep the silent stars go by. Yet in the dark streets shineth, the everlasting light. The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight. |
Dark night, evening stars cold in the sky, Jesus will be born tonight. Don't most babies come after midnight, screaming their way into the world? When was Jesus born? Just after dusk? Just before dawn? While Joseph was away looking for a midwife, or while he held Mary and helped her have her child?