by Revd Natasha Brady
Now Christmas day is finally here, what do we do now? Do we just stay indoors, and snuggle up close to a fire or under a warm blanket, eating those Christmas chocolates we bought on special offer for the ‘big day’, or should we be plotting and planning our summer getaways for 2019? Dreaming of warmer climes and crystal blue seas.
I find the few days rest between the chaos of preparing to meet with Jesus afresh and the New Year can give us a precious moment to just remember who we are, the place we inhabit on this earth and the capacity we have within us to be the creative, gifted, people of God, Jesus came to free us to be. Yet, this gap in our calendars can be seen as dead space, the no-mans land between Christmas cheer and New Years Celebrations, where nothing much really happens. Its a dormant space, like the winter season it sits in, but I wonder if we can use this fallow time, to remember. Remember that as people we all have the capacity to feel, make, assume certain roles in life, roles that maybe even we either live up or down to … that is what others think or expect of us.
I want us to remember that, as people, we have the capacity to see the beauty of the natural world around us and marvel at its intricacies and anomalies. Just think of a spiders web, hanging on a door frame, on a chilly, crisp Winter morning. It looks like lace work of the finest quality, yet it is so fragile and temporary. Isn’t it amazing how generous God has been to our little arachnid friends (and I use the term “friend” loosely, because I struggle to love spiders ) to plant within them such a gift of creativity? And for what purpose is this creative gift for, why has he endowed them with such skills? To catch food. What extravagance!
I want us to remember that we too have gifting and talents just laying there, as dormant as the sleeping trees of winter, waiting to be awoken. All we need to do to reactivate them is to remember who we are. We are the wonderful creation of our Father God …. made in his image, loved unreservedly, and called to be his lights in this dark and dusky world. Once we have grasped that then we will have a much stronger sense of who we are and why we exist. We will remember, why it was a so important that God sent his Son down to earth, on that first Christmas day. We will remember that he did that to rescue us from a dormant, dead life, that leads nowhere, and inspires no vibrancy or creativity or appreciation of beauty or gives us any sense of peace.
Because it is from that renewed memory, we will remember that we are meant to be be intricately connected to God. That connection brings with it a knowledge of and understanding of what God has given us, from before we were even knitted together in our Mother’s wombs … and that is God’s inner radiance and strength. Which sustains and renews us not just through dark nights and short days, but every day. So let us remember, to use this opportunity of being in this fallow time, to draw closer to the source of all life, God the Father, and continue to remember the coming of his Son, whom he sent in love to save us, and be inspired by His Spirit to be all that God has created us to be.
Merry Christmas and God bless – Revd Natasha x
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