Nativity

“She brought forth a son, her firstborn, whom she wrapped in his swaddling-clothes and laid in a manger, because there was no room for them in the inn.”  (2 Luke 7.)

Our Grace arrives as a humble and helpless thing, primal and unadorned. It is born as if from nowhere, and its appearance is to people who may least expect it, to whom it is least likely: the lost, helpless, anonymous wanderers. Our Grace is not only unexpected, it is usually unwanted. There is no time; no room in our hearts for the image of the life to which we are to be devoted. We would prefer to be left to our own devices. Nevertheless it comes to us and in its swaddled, bawling reality, from the outbuildings of our crowded lives it calls to us until we realize that it is for this Grace that we too were born, and its majestic reality awakens our soul.