Streams of Mercy

Tonight the wait is over! Tonight all our preparations have been made, or put aside for another year, and we settle into the mystery. We follow the star to Bethlehem, and join the crowd that’s gathering around a manger. We know the carols and the scriptures; we know the whole story so well we can tell it by heart!

“It’s a hallowed time,” writes Frederick Buechner, “a holy time, a time in which life grows still like the surface of a lake, so that we can look down into it and see glimmering there in its depths something timeless, precious, other. It’s a gracious time, a time that we cannot bring about as we can bring about a happy time or a sad time, but a time that comes upon us as grace, as a free and unbidden gift.”

“Christmas Comes” by poet Ann Weems

Christmas comes every time we see God in other persons.

The human and the holy meet in Bethlehem

or in Times Square,

for Christmas comes like a golden storm

on its way to Jerusalem -

determinedly, inevitably.

Even now it comes,

in the face of hatred and warring –

no atrocity too terrible to stop it,

no Herod strong enough,

no hurt deep enough,

no curse shocking enough,

no disaster shattering enough.

For someone on earth will see the star,

someone will hear the angel voices, someone will run to Bethlehem,

someone will know peace and goodwill: the Christ will be born!

Giving thanks that Christmas is always coming, and for those streams of mercy, never ceasing. Merry Christmas!

Elizabeth