Sunday Reflection/Christmas Prayer 2023

Today's reflection is brought to you by 

Luke 1:37.

"There is nothing too hard for the Great Spirit."

--First Nations Version: 

An Indigenous Translation of the New Testament 

(Downer's Grove IL: InterVarsity Press 2021, ISBN 978-0-8308-1350-6).

In this time of the year, the darkness weighs on us... It's too easy to see the war and division and trouble and danger we are facing in so many places and ways. 

But but we hold on to the fact that the light is beginning to increase a tiny amount every day -- and if we look, we can see that Love Incarnate exists in our poor, broken world in all the people who try to make it a better place. And there are many of those people!

Creator's chief spirit-messenger, also known as Gabriel, is right when he tells Mary and all of us that nothing is too hard for the Great Spirit, especially when we let Love be born in us, too.

I take inspiration from these words of Howard Thurman, a great black theologian who let the Spirit live in him as a civil rights leader during a challenging time -- as challenging times continue wherever people are oppressed. 

There are so many symbols of Christmas. May you find them all around you this week! 

The symbol of Christmas—what is it? It is the rainbow arched over the roof of the sky when the clouds are heavy with foreboding. It is the cry of life in the newborn babe when, forced from its mother’s nest, it claims its right to live. It is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of every day, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil. 

-- Howard Thurman, The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations (Friends United Press: 1973, 1985), 3.

Come, 
Great Spirit of Love.

Be born in our hearts

and in the hearts of people

in all the places

where 

you are most needed 

today.

Inspire us 

to spread 

your great spirit of Love

to everyone we meet

everywhere we go.

There is nothing too hard for you,

but we can do nothing

without you.

Please,

come to live in us, 

always.

+Amen