A CHRISTMAS EVE BLOG FROM THE BACK PORCH

THE BABY CHANGES EVERYTHING!

       I woke this morning composing this blog! Our Blue Candle prayer over the Old Testament has shown that God – Creator, Lover, Father, Son and Holy Spirit is excited about covenant with us. That covenant is the story of Israel – prototypical People of God, and of all of us: Irish, Ecuadorean, Mexican, Italian, German….we are also the people of God  by virtue of Israel’s YES to that covenant

      This covenant was initially signed in the flesh of Abraham by circumcision, and in the fullness of time, in the sweet, cuddly flesh of a six-pound baby boy, entrusted to Joseph and Mary. He grew up to show us in tall, strong flesh what God looks like, how God acts in the world. I often hear: No one has ever seen God – and I respond: Ain’t so!  I have! In the face and story of Jesus – the baby who changed everything.  

      My friend Sue and her husband Joe are new grandparents: Natalie Claire was born in October and she has changed everything for everyone in that family (and all their friends)!  Every family with a new baby knows that. Love is born again, the fruitful love of a loving marriage: the covenant of a man and woman now seen in the flesh!

       The metaphor persists: God gives a baby boy as sign of God’s covenant with us: so we can see, and touch and hear who our covenant partner is. No burning bush, no Pharaoh - defeating plagues, no flame by night or cloud by day: the New Covenant is as natural as the birth of a baby boy who is more beautiful than the rainbow! This baby is welcomed by the loving adoration of Mary and Joseph, by the poorest of the poor: shepherds and by the richest of the rich: scholar kings from the East. 

       In 2014 I welcome him anew, in my daily work of praise and thanks and awareness of the infinite manifestations and meaning of the metaphor. Thanks and praise, indeed.