(Since my earliest memory of Christmas music, Oh Come All Ye Faithful has been my favorite carol. It’s lyrics inspired this meditation. Christmas blessings to you all today and throughout the year!)
Oh Come All Ye Faithful
Come with your shattered dreams, heavy hearts, and dwindling bank accounts.
Come confused, lonely, and anxious; distracted, rushed, weary.
Come you who try as you might, still fall short of your own expectations.
Come imperfect, unfinished, overwhelmed.
Come, with your diagnoses. Addiction, Arthritis, or Alzheimer’s; come with migraines headaches, chronic fatigue, fibromyalgia. Come with COPD, OCD, PTSD.
Come! Come, Faithful, come and be . . .
Joyful and Triumphant
Joyful! Hear the good news: In Christ you are forgiven!
In Christ, you are free from the bonds of your imperfections, free to be broken, free to be beautiful.
Triumphant! Breathe; you don’t have to push yourself so hard anymore.
The race has been won! In Christ, the victory is secure.
Hallelujah!
Oh Come, ye, oh come ye
Ye who have relinquished control,
Ye who are open to the profound, transformative love of God.
Ye who accept the gift, the son of the Most High: Jesus Christ.
To Bethlehem
Bethlehem: tiny, dusty, impoverished, insignificant.
Bethlehem: where the star shines the brightest.
Bethlehem: where the story begins.
Your Bethlehem: where your story begins.
Come! And behold Him
Behold Jesus! And believe that which you behold.
Jesus! Emmanuel: God with us!
Born the king of Angels
Of all God could have given us, God gave us Jesus—the Holy Son of God—better in diapers than angels in their glory!
Oh! Come let us adore him
Together! Let’s all bring our brokenness, lay it here by the manger, at the foot of the cross.
And let’s lift our unbound hands and our open hearts. Come!
OH come let us adore him!