When the world was dark and the city was quiet, you came.

When the world was dark and the city was quiet, you came.  You crept in beside us.  And no one knew. Only the few who dared to believe that God might do something different.  Will you do the same this Christmas, Lord?  Will you come into the darkness of today’s world; not the friendly darkness as when sleep rescues us from tiredness, but the fearful darkness, in which people have stopped believing that war will end or that peace will come?  Will you come into that darkness and do something different to save your people from despair?  Will you come into the darkness of today’s world?  Not the friendly quietness when friends hold hands, but the fearful silence when the phone has not rung, the letter has not come, the friendly voice no longer speaks, the doctor’s face says it all?  Will you come into that darkness and do something different, to embrace your people?  And will you come into the dark corners and the quiet places of our lives?  We ask this not because the fullness our lives depend upon us being as open and vulnerable to you as you were to us, when you came, wearing no more than swaddling clothes and trusting human hands to hold their maker.  Will you come into our lives if we open then to you and do something different?  When the world was dark and the city was quiet, you came.  You crept in beside us.

Do the same this Christmas, Lord.  Do the same this Christmas.