Below, the Thought about the first Christmas. I wrote this for friends in 2010. Somehow, it seems best not to shutter it off for too many years, so I’m sending your way today — Merry Christmas!

2010 

“Glory to God in the highest heaven and Peace On earth,” sang a multitude of the heavenly hosts.  On pitch, off pitch, could it have mattered?  Noisy voices of God-only-knows-who-or-what cluttered the night sky and startled shepherd’s senses as surely as unexpected thunder rolling across Arizona’s sky.  Heavenly hosts are not usually hanging around the night sky.

“Go! Find the baby wrapped in a band of cloth, lying in a manger.”  

“Let’s go!” shepherds said to one another, seeming oblivious to sheep running amuck  – stupid they may be but even sheep can be startled by hallelujahs hollered from the heavens. 

Below these holy shouts, on this solid earth so suddenly blessed, a young woman throws back her sweaty head.  In dire circumstance she’s birthed a boy.  She’s had hardly time enough to cut a cord or clean blood from her thighs before a band of shepherds stumble across whatever threshold there was, breathlessly blurting the story of a sky full of singers and a message of Salvation.   Sure enough – there he is – lying in a manger.

“Peace.”

For centuries we’ve thought about that word; time enough to protest, even to prove the singers message wrong, were it not for this: 

The boy grew up and shortly before his death said, “Peace I leave with you; my peace I give to you.  I do not give to you as the world gives.  Do not let your hearts be troubled [because God knows we have reason for that], and do not let them be afraid [ditto].”  Well.  If it’s not peace as the world gives . . .what then?

Merry Christmas and Peace – of a sort to be sought

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