Not the most pleasant of the Christmas passages! Certainly not one we include in our cute nativity tableaux…
Yet very much a reality of life, as much today as then. Angry threatened men (and women) still take out their fear and their need to feel superior on the weak, the fragile and the vulnerable. People are still weeping. For their children, their community, their parents – people they don’t even know. Because suffering and destruction are their lot.
We hear a mothers cry. The raw emotion of Rachel. This is gritty reality. There is no neat happy ending to this event. It is just left as it is. Sometimes we need to sit with the pain, the questions, the feelings of hopelessness and the fury – even the thoughts that God has brought it all about. We weep with those who weep, because words are meaningless.
And yet…This is the world Jesus was born into. The world he still inhabits. That is the ending. God is here with us.
Lord,
into the pain,
anger,
confusion,
questions,
terror you were born.
Into a world of cruelty,
greed,
envy
and murder you came.
Little seems any different,
many feel lost,
afraid,
and threatened;
whilst others bully,
intimidate,
cause pain
and death – physical and emotional.
Into this world Lord,
bring your peace,
your hope,
your comfort,
your life.
And equip me to work with you.
Taken from my 2015 book Voices Through Advent and Christmas, available through Moorleys
