Long Way Here

Away from the Manger (The Refugee King)
Written by Liz Vice

Away from the manger they ran for their lives
The crying boy Jesus, a son they must hide
A dream came to Joseph, they fled in the night
And they ran and they ran and they ran

No stars in the sky but the Spirit of God
Led down into Egypt from Herod to hide
No place for his parents no country or tribe
And they ran and they ran and they ran

Stay near me LORD Jesus when danger is nigh
And keep us from Herods and all of their lies
I love the LORD Jesus, the Refugee King
And we sing and we sing and we sing
Alleluja

PRAYER (written by W.E.B. Dubois)

O Thou Incarnate Word of God to man, make us this Christmas night to realize Thy truth: we are not Christian because we process Thy name and celebrate the ceremonies and idly reiterate the prayers of the church, but only in so far and we really comprehend and follow the Christ spirit- we must be poor and not rich, meek and not proud, merciful and not oppressors, peaceful and not warlike or quarrelsome. For the sake of the righteousness of our cause we must bow to persecution and reviling, and again and again turn the stricken cheek to the striker, and above all the cause of our neighbor must be dearer to us dearer than our own cause. This is Christianity. God help us all to be Christians. Amen.

Listen to the song here:

John, the disciple of Jesus, once said, “God is love.” (1 John 4:8)

Notice John did not say that God loves, even though he does. He did not say that God is like love. He did not say that God can be understood as love. He said God is love.

Notice John did not say that God is religion. He did not say that God is right morality or ethics. He did not even say that God is justice. He said, God is love.

We know that if God is love then there is no greater love we can hope to find. John’s words, God is love reminds us that no world power can overtake the Father’s promise. God is love reminds us that no impossibility is impossible for God. God is love, reminds us that the White House cannot replace God’s throne room, and Capitol Hill has been overcome by Calvary’s Hill. God is love reminds us that no matter how unstable society becomes the light of Christ can guide our feet to the path of peace where the joy of the Lord can be our strength, because God’s love has come to us in the newborn King and endures forever. 

The story of Advent reminds us that in Christ Jesus God has entered into our suffering, embodied our sorrow, and enabled our salvation. God is love and will always be love. You are loved, my friend. Don’t forget it.

~ Fred

PRAYER

Holy God, help me to never forget your love for me, my neighbors, my enemies and the entire world. Help me to remember that you loved me before I was born and will love me long after I pass from this life into the next. Your love for me will endure forever. So help me to understand what it means live in your love, right here, right now. In Jesus’ name, Amen.

God entered into our world not with the crushing impact of unbearable glory, but in the way of weakness, vulnerability, and need. The world does not understand vulnerability. Neediness is rejected as incompetence, and compassion is dismissed as unprofitable. But in this weakness and poverty the shipwrecked at the stable would come to know the love of God.”
~ Brennan Manning’s A Glimpse of Jesus: The Stranger to Self-Hatred, p. 138.

PRAYER (adapted from Ephesians 3:14-21)

I turn my attention to you, my Father. Every ethnic group in heaven or on earth is recognized by you. I ask that you will strengthen me in my inner self from the riches of your glory through the Spirit. I ask that Christ will live in my heart through faith. As a result of having strong roots in love, I ask that I will have the power to grasp love’s width and length, height and depth, together with all believers. I ask that I will know the love of Christ that is beyond knowledge so that I will be filled by your Spirit and that your church will be filled entirely with your fullness. Glory to you O’ God, for you are able to do far beyond all that I could ask or imagine by your power at work within your church; glory to you in the church and in Christ Jesus for all generations, forever and always. Amen.

Christmas is Waiting to be Born

Where refugees seek deliverance that never comes,
And the heart consumes itself, if it would live,
Where little children age before their time,
And life wears down the edges of the mind,
Where the old man sits with mind grown cold,
While bones and sinew, blood and cell, go slowly down to death,
Where fear companions each day’s life,
And Perfect Love seems long delayed.
Christmas is waiting to be born:
In you, in me, in all of humankind.

~ From Howard Thurman’s The Mood of Christ & Other Celebrations, p. 23

PRAYER

“God of joy and hope, you come to us in Jesus as a king who overturns all our ordinary understandings of power. Your presence is unexpected and unsettling, but we know you, for we have known your healing and provision. Open our hearts to keep on singing and hoping, that we may live snd set without fear.”

~ from Walter Brueggemann’s, Devotions of Advent: Celebrating Abundance, p. 49

“A sort of joy exists that knows nothing at all of the heart’s pain, anguish, and dread; it does not last; it can only numb a person for the moment. The joy of God has gone through the poverty of the manger and the agony of the cross; that is why it is invincible, irrefutable. It does not deny the anguish, when it is there, but finds God in the midst of it, in fact precisely there; it does not deny grave sin but finds forgiveness precisely in this way; it looks death straight in the eye, but it finds life precisely within it.

Full of joy, we are enabled to believe that there was and is One to whom no human suffering or sin is foreign and who in deepest love accomplished our redemption. Only in such joy in Christ the Redeemer shall we be preserved from hardening ourselves where human suffering encounters us.” 

~ From Dietrich Bonhoeffer’s work (translated by Wayne W. Floyd), Conspiracy and Imprisonment, p. 377

PRAYER

God, you have called me out of darkness into your wonderful light. By your Spirit, open my soul to experience your joy, and be strong in faith, in hope, and in love. The wise men followed the star, and found Christ who is light from light. May I too find the revelation of the Lord’s presence as I follow you. In Jesus’ name, Amen.