Streams of Mercy

Each year I get out my tattered Christmas card list and prepare to send greetings to folks who have been important on my life’s journey. Sometimes I’m not even sure they’re still around to receive the greeting, but that doesn’t seem to matter – it’s the remembering and sending that make it all worthwhile.

As I reached for that tattered list once again, the words of J. Barrie Shepherd’s new Christmas poem, “Tidings,” featured in a recent edition of Presbyterians Today, found a place in my heart, and they were tucked inside each card.

Tidings

“This season’s festive cards

that crush and crowd the mails

bear witness to the limits,

all those insistent boundaries

that ever mark and mar our loving.

Time diminishes daily,

the distant miles remain the same.

Lives we have brushed against

and learned to care for

now seem too far removed to reach again,

remember and renew the days we shared.

But still we cherish them,

refuse, despite the years, to let them go,

and want to let them know

that within the promise of the manger child

our hope is yet alive, a hope writ large

across this flimsy, brightly colored card.”

To friends near and far, here and now and all through the years:

“Fear not, for behold I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people. For unto you is born this day in the city of David a Savior, which is Christ the Lord!” Luke 2:10-11 (KJV) So grateful for sharing life’s journey with you, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing.

Elizabeth