Where'd We Lose You, Jesus?
December 23rd, 2016
A Christmas Prayer
Dear Jesus,
Where did we lose you?
In the tinsel and wrapping, the clearances and road rage?
Our greedy grasping for more?
Or was it long before all that?
Did you get lost in the wrappings of those swaddling clothes?
The chorus of angels we heard about hearing on high?
Did you get swallowed by the lofty creations meant to make your life mean something to us?
Where did we lose you?
In evergreens that shed their dry needles on our floors?
In the tangle of Christmas lights invoked with curses, not blessings?
Or was it long before all that?
Did you get lost in the disappointment that so many seek peace on earth by waging more war?
That those we love continue to get sick and die as it was before that first Christmas?
Did you get smothered by those who hoped and dreamed you were different than you are?
Dear Jesus,
How can we find you again?
Alive and well amidst the tinsel and wrapping for those we love.
Pressing in upon us in our rush for the clearances
Chuckling at our impatience, diffusing the road rage.
Surely you are there bandaged in little strips of human need.
There too bringing all of the universe to witness the fullness of God’s hope in every tiny baby’s cry.
All of our lofty language about you is too small, too finite to begin to tell the story of your fullness of life.
So now in the candle light, suffused with the story and the glory, myths bigger than we can imagine and yet too little to encompass your wholeness;
And later, amidst the tattered litter of our celebration,
Trampling the dead, dry needles of our evergreens,
When the beauty of the crystal snow is dirty slush beneath our slipping boots,
May we look up and down and all around, within, without—far out,
And there discover anew the God who is.
The one breath of the universe in whom all of us live and move and have our being.
Merry Christmas, Jesus. It’s good to have you here with us.
Amen.
–Bruce Roller for Plymouth Congregational United Church of Christ, Christmas Eve, 2007
Happy Holidays
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