I invite you to invest a few minutes of your day, basking in the following songs on this Christmas, Day 6:
Gather Round, Ye Children Come
Mary giving birth to Jesus was a wholly natural event – painful, long, complicated, messy, exhausting – and yet wholly divine, majestic, announced by a throng of angels, calling into flame a new star. Joseph, the impromptu ‘midhusband,’ insides quaking from having had to catch the infant boy as he emerged from his nine-month confinement; his soul on fire having felt the weight of this child, the weight of his own sin, the weight of glory so strong he could barely stop his knees from shaking. The shepherds who crowded the barn opening saw a normal, sleeping, swaddled newborn and yet their faces were awash with the tucked-away glory of the moment, their hearts close to bursting at their somehow up-close-and-personal contact with none other than God Himself – Emmanuel! God with them! Before their very eyes! At the angels’ very specific and personal invitation – to them, of all people! This juxtaposition of ordinary and extraordinary felt both mundane and magnificent, common and colossal, Heaven intersecting Earth. Jean-Pierre de Caussade explained the phenomenon like this: “Those who have abandoned themselves to God always lead mysterious lives and receive from him exceptional and miraculous gifts by means of the most ordinary, natural and chance experiences in which there appears to be nothing unusual.”
Today is Day 6 of this precious season of gift receiving. Of pondering beyond the decorations and parties and overeating, of sitting with the Gift with no agenda but to sit with the Gift. You see, we are not particularly gifted at receiving because it’s embarrassing, humbling. Receiving clearly indicates that we are the receivers of the action of giving. We are not the doers. We are not the gifters, we are the giftees. There is no further doing to be done. On top of that, the already-done doing is so perfectly executed there is nothing to be added, no appropriate course of action other than receiving. In assuming the one-down position of acknowledging the upper hand of the Giver, our souls are rightly positioned, at rest, at Shalom, and there, we get to glorify God and enjoy Him forever! A Blessed Christmas Season to you! PD
