Cast into a story not my own, but a story where I belong. A story where I have a place. Shepherds were cast into a story, as was Mary. A child born in the night who would change everything. A baby slipping into the world through the mess and pain of life. A baby taking space in a food trough. For some time I have been wrestling where I belong. Relationships shift and change. People we love pass through life - love for them must find its expressing across life’s boundaries of death, or geographical distance. |
Cast into a story. The story I find myself is bit by bit, becoming my belonging place. It doesn’t belong to relationships yet it is all about relationship. It doesn’t belong to a place, but is about all places.
To be cast into God’s story, is the human soul responding to a love that holds all that there is about life. It is not bound by death or loneliness, or hurt or pain. It meets us right there and calls us to life within those moments. As Mary, Joseph and the shepherds were cast into a story, they each came to their place in a quiet animal shelter.
Where have you found yourself cast into the story? Are you with Mary - young mothers finding themselves thrust into the responsibility of parenting? Or perhaps the shepherds - workers making a hard quid to feed families? Perhaps you are with the animals wondering what’s going on with something different in the food trough, struggling to understand and make sense of strange events before you. . . . . Or perhaps another who has been cast into the story.
In this Christmas season of 2020, may you be met by the baby born through the night, who changed everything . . . . .