We are in our final week of our journey to the day we celebrate as the birth of Jesus. In those days the write of Luke tells us that Joseph, being of the house of David, went with Mary from Nazareth to Bethlehem, a distance of about 90 miles by the roads that existed at that time. The trip would have taken about five to six days.
Traveling on foot through territory occupied by an not-so-nice army would not hav been easy, just as it is not easy for refugees traveling today. We see pictures of exhausted people, fleeing armies that would kill or oppress them and we shudder. We want to think of happier journeys this time of year, the kind that bring people together with those they love.
This year our journeys will, hopefully, be not as difficult as they were last Christmas when we were, for the most part, still in a lockdown, fearful of the virus that could kill us, much like the armies and marauders that stalk and kill refugees. This is a week of journey, moving us closer to a goal not of completion but of gratitude. Making the journey is part of our search for God.
Prayer for the Day
We hear the words of the prophets promising comfort,
But in this time we ask how we comfort ourselves and others;
We listen to the answers that we should see and hear with our hearts,
To the anguish of those around us and act to relieve their sufferings.
Grant, O God that we forget not the journeys made by others,
Searching for freedom and healing from pain and oppression.
In the name of the One who came to deliver us all,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thought for the Day
The only journey is the one within.
Rainier Maria Rilke, Austrian poet and essayist (1875-1926)
Reformation, like education, is a journey, not a destination.
Mary Harris Jones, known as “Mother” Jones, union organizer (1837-1930)
Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God.
Speak tenderly to Jerusalem, and cry to her, that her iniquity is pardoned
That she has received from the Lord’s hand double for all her sins.
A voice cries out: Prepare ye the way of the Lord,
And make straight in the desert a highway for our God
Every valley shall be lifted up, and every mountain and hill made low;
The crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain.
Then the glory of the Lord shall be revealed, and all flesh shall see it together,
For the mouth of the Lord has spoken it.
Isaiah 40: 1-5