Most years I write a poem at Christmas; my way to reflect on the wonder and the meaning of the season. Without doing so, the advent season can so easily rip by.
The past year was a full and joyful one for my family, but it wasn’t without pain. Like us, you may have experienced tragedy or have ones you hold dear who did.
Christmas is a collision, isn’t it? Of joy and sorrow, hope and regret, light and darkness. A time of year when, with time to think and the expectation of meaningful connection with family and friends, the most difficult aspects of this earthy sojourn surface alongside the most beautiful.
As I reflected, that story from scripture of the man who lay beside the road, on the fringe of the pools of Bethesda, came to mind. A man trapped within his own body, paralyzed and languishing for 38 years, before his miracle arrived.
While Christ transforms the spiritual reality for all who believe in him, the miracle of his advent doesn’t necessarily mean the physical transformation so many of us long for or need arrives when we think we need it, as we want it, or even at all (a mystery the world’s philosophers have pondered and will continue to with much more depth than I).
In these three stories from scripture of individuals who waited decades for the answer to their question to arrive, there’s something for us to see.
I hope you enjoy my Christmas poem for 2018 and that you and yours have a Merry Christmas and a fantastic–even miraculous–New Year.
~ AK
