Reflections Luke 2; 40-52

Always the confusion

Busy, busy,

Busyness: the cold, competing voices,

Calling, alien, strident,

Calling me

Calling us

Across the bitter tundra of uncertainty,

The guilt that we are never quite enough;

Calling …

Calling …

Did you not know I must be about

My father’s business?

Here our troubled eyes take pause,

Pondering,

What is our father’s business?

What would he

Have of us?

What should we

Do in the sight, in the light,

Of given grace,

We who wear his name?

And how do we discern

His clear call from the clamour of our oughts?

Take us into stillness,

Let us hear again,

Your tender love,

The clarion call of faith:

That we may see again,

Under the clamour and the drama,

The face of Jesus everywhere we look.

Reflection Luke 2: 36-39

Through the full years and the sere

She has waited.

Through the turnings of the stars and the seasons of the sun

She has waited.

Through the cycles of birth and death,

The bitter and the sweet,

She has waited.

She has cried and dried her tears,

She has smiled, and heard her laughter fall away,

She has sat through both the words and the silence:

She has waited,

She has waited on her God.

For him she has fasted and prayed.

For him she has bound herself

To the temple of his former glory.

For him, for him she has waited

While her years stretched thin

In the purpose of his timing.

Her eyes have strained so long

Into the mercy of his giving,

They have truly learned to see.

This child,

This child,

This one among so many,

Is the promise come to flesh,

Redemption made visible,

His mercy in her hands.

Now unto us

Grant in your mercy,

Her hands, her heart, her eyes,

Her certainty

Of grace more real than any earthly thing.

Reflections Luke 2: 33-35

This, the upside-down kingdom,

Is not birthed easily.

(Not, at least, in the kingdoms of this world).

Every position reversed,

Every pride undone,

Every doing undone

(That which we call repentance).

The revealing of hearts is at hand.

There is a promise of sorrow

In the foothills of everlasting joy.

A time for breaking,

And a time for being remade.

A time of hope crushed,

And a time of hope fulfilled.

A time for a piercing sword,

And a time for the mending of wounds.

A time for death,

And a time for resurrection.

Give us wisdom to measure our days,

That we may know our time,

And know that it is not all time.

Remind us that shadows pass,

That the cost of the kingdom

Is everything and nothing,

And the price is small.

May we lift up our hands in acceptance

Reflections Luke 2: 25-32

In the arid lands,

Spaces between the spaces,

The interstitial wildernesses of our sojourn,

We wait for consolation.

In the dry heave between the tears,

The not-yet not becoming,

The broken shells where no life blooms,

We wait for consolation.

In the cities of our lost identities,

The howling horror of our maybes,

The perhaps that blows away,

We wait for consolation.

Shall we recognise its face?

Our prayers are more than dust upon the air

Only because you hold them.

Our hopes are more than candle flames gone out

Only because you hold them.

Our faith has wings to rise above the night

Only because you hold it.

We see your promise and it is enough

Because you are ‘I am’.

Reflections Luke 2: 21-24

 Only a pair of doves

The most they could afford.

No lamb was offered up

In payment for the Lord.

No lamb was offered up.

They brought the Lamb of God,

The Shepherd of the sheep,

Who came to shed his blood.

No lamb was offered up

Before the altar there;

They brought the spotless One

The Lamb beyond compare.

Come to fulfil the law

Come to die in our place

To end all sacrifice

All other lambs replace.

Only a pair of doves,

No lamb for him was given:

The perfect Lamb of God

The saviour come from heaven.

Reflection Luke 2: 8-20

This place where angels can’t contain their joy

Is not the habitation of the great

No priest proclaims this wonder, and no king

Welcomes God’s messengers in high estate.

Outside the city, on the lonely hills

Where Israel’s outcasts watch the temple flock,

In the deep dark, the sleepy, half-dazed hour:

It is bored shepherds whom the angels shock.

To them, and them alone, the news is given.

Unto the least is shared the wonder-song

Of highest heaven: God has come to earth

And he is worshipped by the angel-throng.

Not by our pious platitudes will we

Posture ourselves to stand where angels hymn.

Not by the merits which we seek to earn

Do we gain favour with the seraphim.

Christ did not sit on a religious throne

But, torn and bruised, went out the city gate,

And on a bitter hill salvation wrought,

Bearing our sin, our death, our hell, our hate

And in the darkened silence of the tomb

Death was reversed, and glory, glory came.

These are the places where men meet with God,

These are the places where we learn his name.

And like the shepherds, we must rise and go

First to behold him, and then to proclaim.

Speaking with wonder of the Christ we know

Who met us in our silence and our shame.

Reflections Luke 2: 6-7

Always the outsider God,

The one we have no room for.

Our plans are full, our diaries marked

With heavy expectations, (ours and theirs).

The scheduled life denies

All serendipity.

The grindstone grinds us down.

What does it take to move us from the hellish bent

Of mortal fullness?

Where are hands outstretched

In empty supplication?

To forget

Our least-ness is to hurtle down to beast-ness.

Lord, interpose

Your sword-sharp glory slicing through our days,

Shearing away the dross of mindlessness,

Cutting a path to worship once again;

Making a way back home.

Let us make room for you;

Relinquishing the paltry to make room for grace,

Seeing you where we’d rather turn our backs,

Turning again, again,

Returning to the place we should have been,

To kneel in wonder on the stable floor.

And see god’s glory there, amidst the straw.