It’s Christmas Day!
Today, angels and stars, shepherds and travellers, and a new born child tell a love story full of danger, promise and intrigue laying bare the beauty and compassion of an amazing God! Our God! Jesus Christ, God with us!
Jesus is the light of the world. A light no darkness can ever put out.

Luke 2: 1 – 7 – The Birth of Jesus
1 In those days a decree went out from Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 All went to their own towns to be registered. 4 Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea, to the city of David called Bethlehem, because he was descended from the house and family of David. 5 He went to be registered with Mary, to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child. 6 While they were there, the time came for her to deliver her child. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth, and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.

Prayer
Wake up baby God! We want to gaze into your eyes
those eyes full of light and life and love.
Let us see your baby hands, feel your tiny grip around a finger.
Your grip, a grip that can hold both us and the world you made.
Wake up baby God, you speak volumes to us in a gasp of life-giving air and the cry of new life.
Let us hold you and feel your weight, both fragile and immense. Lord God, let us take stock of all that you are, in this brand-new body, the one you chose to come among us.
Thank you, Lord for letting us see you and examine you dealing with human life and struggle.
Thank you for the pattern you showed us for our lives if we will only wake up and open our eyes to see your light and love and life and glory.
Forgive us when we have slept, baby like, oblivious to the world around us.
Awaken us to all that you see, even in your infancy, from the borrowed manger where you lay.
Baby God – God with us as we cry to you and marvel at you; help us to embrace you, not only as a child, but to embrace all the grace and glory that your human frame exemplified in life, death and resurrection.
God with us, today you stand at our stable door, bearing the unwrapped, open gift of unrelenting love,
and you invite us to take it, to relish it, to be joyful with it and to share it!
Waken us up Baby God, again, and again, and again. Amen
May the peace of Christ Jesus, the love of God, the joy of new birth and the hope of eternal light and love be yours this Christmas Day.

Happy Christmas!
Rev Janine