Nation (December)

Why? The cruel contests of the Middle East leave us asking, why do the nations so furiously rage together, and the people imagine a vain thing? We gaze from afar at deliberate provocation and destruction. Handel’s Psalm 2, heard each December, seems inclusive, for assuredly we belong to a nation, whether we like it or not. Is a nation defined more by what divides or unites? Most modern versions chime with Handel, but the Authorised Version asks, why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing? The meaning alters into us and them, the heathen without frontiers.

Tinsel (December)

The word is not in Scripture. It’s from Old French for scintilla, spark. Scripture moves us to question the world’s empty show. The meaning of the star isn’t the star but where it leads us. Recently the State Government entrenched tinsel as the meaning of Christmas. Kooky is the person who decorates their tree with seasonal cherries, original artwork, dangling nativities, but not tinsel.  Very kooky the person who doesn’t have a tree. Don’t they know it’s Christmas? Prince Albert has a lot to answer for. First and last, the Incarnation. Otherwise, December 25^th may as well be Tinsel Day.

Abiding (December)

Our news is the same old lies. Religions start all wars. Religion poisons everything. Yet every December abiding abides, waits on consciousness.  “And there were in the same country shepherds abiding in the field…” It concentrates attention to read, in a Christian story, of people who don’t know about Christianity, the full blockbuster series. Scripture moves us to consider shepherds, minding their business, same old job year in, year out: flocks. As though so often the ordinary business of faith hope love is simply to abide. When, wait for it, “And lo, the angel of the Lord came upon them.”