|
|
My |
|
|
Write:
|
A poem by a wonderful Kansas poet, Naomi Patterson, hit me in the heart so keenly that I actually sat at my computer stabbing the air with my right arm. Let me share it with you:
The little baby Jesus descended from our attic like Mama’s distant cousin who shows up once a year. He settles unobtrusively on the fringe of invitation, cuddles in his blanket and naps through Christmas day. I usually ignore him, half wondering why he’s here. But none the less, he stays with us until the tree goes dry. Mama says perhaps we ought to see him more and let him stay. But I’ve already packed him up, the little baby Jesus.
Jesus doesn’t want to nap through your Christmas. He wants to be awakened when we are in trouble like his friends woke him one day when he was taking a nap and a big storm hit. They cried out, “Wake up master! We are in a big storm and our little boat is about to sink!” He didn’t get angry. He knows our weaknesses and he wants to be with us in the storms of life. Like right now. If this old world isn’t in trouble right now, it never has been. Our troops will spend Christmas in a foreign land. People there are blowing themselves up just to kill a few people they hate. Wake up, Jesus, and give us the wisdom and love to get out of this mess. Contrary to his words urging us to do good “for the least among us,” the people we trusted to look out for the common good just voted $50 billion in tax benefits to the richest and took $50 billion from the hands and mouths of the poor. Let’s wake up, Jesus, and see if he can give us the courage and heart to stand up to them. We need to wake him up to help us protect our children from sick predators. He told us to take special care of the “little people.” He warned that to harm even one would bring us more pain than having a millstone tied around our necks and being tossed into the sea. But sick men and women kidnap our children, rape and kill them, and toss them away like a rag doll. They serve a short sentence and are released like hungry lions to do it again. Our children are not getting the education they need to lead us into any kind of decent future. We’ve just cut school lunches for the poorest as if there’s no connection between learning and nutrition. We are in trouble with our values. Millions will think of nothing but what to buy. We shop until we drop with not a thought of the life-saving story about a baby who spent his first Christmas in a cattle-feeding trough just to show that the value is in the story, not the gifts. The story is the gift. In the words of one of my Christmas songs, Old Santa is dear he brings lots of chee but Santa is here for just a day. Greater by far is the Bethlehem star, our first gift that first Christmas day. He’s the good news about Christmas that shines in our hearts every day. One commentator wrote that the story of Jesus being asleep in a boat was a type of a person being unaware that Jesus is in their own heart, ready to help them through life’s storms. As John said, he is the Light that lights up every man coming into the world.” It’s our unawareness that makes him seem so unavailable to us. As Mama says in the poem, “Perhaps we ought to see him more and let him stay.” It would help if we got less excited about posting the Ten Commandments and more excited about living by his Sermon on the Mount. I think I will read that on Christmas Day.
|
