[Dialogue] For Christmas Eve

[George Holcombe]

We got this Christmas letter from a Baptist preacher's wife, Suzii Paynter, who is the Director of the Texas Baptists Christian Life Commission, and with whom Wanda has worked for several years, and it struck me as something worth passing on.

  "The most common greeting of the first Christmas was not 'Merry Christmas' it was 'Don't be afraid!' It took real courage and perseverance to be at the manger - Mary's courage, Joseph's commitment to Mary, the awestruck obedience of shepherds and the politically threatening courage of the Magi to rebuke Herod.  The gift of God's son to a hostile and dangerous world is a story full of risk and adventurous obedience.  
  Christmas means turning the world order on its head through love.  Jesus, echoing Isaiah, said of his own mission, that he had been 'anointed to preach the gospel to the poor, to heal the broken hearted, to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovery of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised." (Luke 4 & Isaiah61)

From Mowanjum to Kawangware, and all the place in between, Merry Christmas.
  

George Holcombe
14900 Yellowleaf Tr.
Austin, TX 78728
Mobile 512/252-2756
geowanda at earthlink.net

‎“...we have the choice: we can gratefully cultivate the relationships that make us part of a vast network, or we can take them for granted and allow them to wither and die.”  Brother David Steindl-Rast, Deeper than Words



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