Walking in Shadow
“Is it enough?” this muslim asks,
“I cannot know until it is too late.”
Walking In Shadow from AIM On-Field Media on Vimeo.
Used courtesy Africa Inland Mission
Dreaming of a Light Christmas
“Richard, guess who it is?” mum yelled upstairs.
Braking halfway down the rickety stairs,
there he was leaning in our doorway. “If ever I meet my dad, however big he is,
however small I am,” screamed a kid silently,
“I‟m going to run up and hit him as hard as I can!”
And now I‟m no longer a boy.
Dark London night, darker thoughts.
Anyone hurt you?
Christmas can be the darkest time of the year.
Frozen to the stairs, I flashed back two years to a pew and a blind man who opened my eyes to outstretched arms, and to the forgiveness I found there.
Peace at any Price
Spirit to seed Cathedral to cave Throne to trough Starbursts to sawdust Angels to animals Robe to diaper Everything to nothing God to us He had equal status with God but didn’t think so much of himself that he had to cling to the advantages of that status no matter what.
Not at all. When the time came, he set aside the privileges of deity and took on the status of a slave, became human!
Silent Night
The tense quiet was broken with the sound of:
“Stille Nacht, heilige Nacht, Alles schläft; einsam wacht.”
Huddled in frozen trenches a stone‟s throw apart, Scottish,
French and Germans strained to make sense of “Silent Night”
that Christmas Eve, 1914.
Clasping a Christmas tree, the man, much more at home in
the Berlin opera house, clamored up onto the field decorated
with the fallen he might soon be joining. Then one by one, leaving their weapons, enemies joined
the choir. French wine, Scottish beer and German chocolate
were swapped, sweetheart photos shared, prayers made
and war’s brutalities forgotten.
No Goodbye
One wintry London night, I walked into a little church.
Two hours later I walked out hand in hand with God. “Tonight you took my hand,” God whispered,
“I will never let you go,
I will never let you down,
I will never walk off and leave you.” Why these whispers from God?
Was it because the day I was born my dad walked out
of the rest of my life?
Someone walked out of your life?
A father, a husband, a friend, a business partner? Let you down? Let you go?
The Broken Organ
Music selected for the new organ, new church decorated,
Father Joseph Mohr, also new to the church in Obendorf,
left nothing to chance — especially the music.
Austrians loved the sound of music and never more so
than at Christmas.
No one in this alpine village missed the candle-light service.
St. Nicholas would be ablaze with light and sound. Then dismay. Father Mohr discovered the organ was broken. Is something broken in your life this Christmas – a marriage, a
friendship, health, a vehicle, a business? Can’t be fixed?