The Old Testament prophets spoke of a return to God and to keeping Gods laws as a basis for living in peace, peace with God, with one another and ourselves. When God’s people wander away from their true calling, and forget the plight of others, they become aimless and empty, and their souls are not fed. Only God can satisfy the hungry soul, and so Gods prophets cry in the emptiness and chaos, because in their hearts is a dream which refuses to die. Isaiah speaks of a light in the darkness. Its an everlasting promise, there will be light in the darkness for Gods people, because as the prophets say, a child will be born who will save/make whole, God’s people.
We have journeyed through Advent together. We have remembered the pregnant waiting for Christmas. We wait with the poor, with the homeless, the refugees throughout the world and we know that Christ often comes to us in the face of the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalised.
The focus of this journey centres on a baby and as so often they do, that baby becomes a vehicle of hope.
And so Christ is not born today in a stable but within us, a light which gives us hope and gives hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved, a light that will never go out because it has an eternal fuel. God is with us, for ever.
This homeless God is homed in Mary. We also can give birth to so much of God. Our faith, our religion needs to be expressed in real experience. Talk of God need earthing in what is real and then giving birth to through us. And we can all bring to birth something really good in the New Year.
So remember this Christmas
1. Those who are alone
2. Those who are homeless
3. The refugees
Like the boy with the loaves and the fishes we give the little that what we can
