Christmas

Loving Father, we come to you today to thank you for the most wonderful gift we will ever receive - Your Son, Jesus Christ - who came to show us the path to Heaven and to accompany us on our journey.  As we celebrate His birthday, we share the songs of the angels, the joy of the shepherds, and the worship of the wise men.  All over the world, Father, close the doors of hate and open the doors of love.

God's dilemma

If you are computer wizard you can easily rig up a machine that announces “I love you” whenever you walk past it.  Of course, it would be meaningless: genuine love is based on a choice, to love or not to love.   That was God’s dilemma: if He didn’t give us the choice, our profession of love wouldn’t mean a thing but if He did, He could not be sure how we would use it.  Of course, He soon found out; from the very beginning we disobeyed - with terrible consequences, because lacking blameless souls we had no access to the throne of Heavenly grace.  So how did He solve the problem?  He sent His Son to be one of us.  He needed a perfect, blameless human to die and be worthy to open the gates.  That is what we celebrate each Christmas - the fact that death is the beginning, not the end.  That’s what I think, anyway - so I’m glad I’m a Christian - and cannot understand why we don‘t shout it from the rooftops.