If we are lucky, once or twice in a lifetime we might experience an example of thanksgiving so deep, so wide, that we can recall it and use it to move ourselves away from the sense of scarcity that the world embraces and move us to the sense of the abundant life which Christ promises us.
Harriet Bedell, missionary and friend to the Seminole Indians of Florida, was born in Buffalo, New York on March 19, 1875. She was trained as a schoolteacher but was inspired several years later by an Episcopalian missionary who spoke at her church describing the many needs of missionary work.
The mysterious “wise men” from the East caught popular Christian fancy earlier and more often then did Luke’s rather pedestrian shepherds-visitors to Bethlehem. In the Protoevangelium of James (second century) only magi come to pay homage at the Bethlehem cave—an interesting mixture of Matthew and Luke.
The first king was very young,
O balow, balow la lay,
With doleful ballads on his tongue,
O balow, balow la lay,
You know how sometimes on a pitch black night in the country, you see far off one glimmer of light and you follow it and it turns out to be just a candle in a cottage window—but it was enough to assure you of life ahead, to give you the lead you wanted in the dark.
But why was the Christ child sent into Egypt? The text makes this clear: he was to fulfill what the Lord had spoken by the prophet, “Out of Egypt have I called my son.” From that point onward we see that the hope of salvation would be proclaimed to the whole world.
Let us awake, awake and give praise
Before daybreak,
To the divine heir of the heavenly land
There is a welcome.
The point of telling infancy stories about the one who was to die bravely and mightily rise is to remind us that we are invited to a relationship with the divine that is never built on force. It is built on vulnerability, intimacy, and complete trust.
Naming in myth and fairy story has always been associated with power and identity. Thus, Adam named the beasts; in the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost; let his name not be remembered; thou shalt not take the name of the Lord thy God in vain; and so on.
The days are growing noticeably shorter; the nights are longer, deeper, colder. Today the sun did not rise as high in the sky as it did yesterday. Tomorrow it will be still lower. At the winter solstice the sun will go below the horizon, below the dark.