The Rt. Rev. Sean Rowe, Bishop of Northwestern Pennsylvania and Provisional Bishop of Bethlehem, has this Christmas message appearing in The Morning Call. An excerpt:
The notion of enduring light is comforting in this season of short days and long nights. When we pick up a newspaper to learn of massacres in far-off places, racial unrest at home, and a rising tide of economic prosperity that is lifting only the boats of people who are already well off, it too is comforting to believe that darkness will not overcome us. I believe this.
God means to comfort us, yet God means to challenge us too. It is in the nature of light to fall indiscriminately. The sun shines on the just and the unjust alike. It lights the way of those we love and those we do not. It warms those who share our values and those who oppose them. Having worked so hard to “deserve” God’s grace, we are sometimes troubled to find that God, like the father in the story of the prodigal son, doesn’t always play by rules we find fair.
The church, like most other institutions, has struggled to absorb this lesson.
As they say, read it all.
Posted by John B. Chilton