a gift

Opening Prayer: Lord Jesus, you are truly God’s indescribable gift.  May we, in turn, give you the gift of our very lives, in response to your extravagant love and affection.  Amen.

Scripture: Matthew 2:10-11

Journal: How will you open your treasures to him today?  What will you give to Jesus?

Reflection:

O Thou who always art all everywhere

Art now confined in this small space, defined

By skin and muscle, skeleton; you wear

A baby’s face—eyes, cheeks, chin, lips like wine

Or blood.  Beneath your tiny breastbone beats

Within your newborn flesh a human heart:

In Thou, O Son, the heart of humans meets

God’s heart and beats anew. And though in part

I see and I know, I yet see face to face

Because you cloister in this skin, this straw

Strewn crib, this cattle stall, this place

Particular, grim, but glimmering now

With Thou, O Thou, dear bound unbounded All,

Thou tabernacling fleshed Emmanuel.

~Kimberlee Conway Ireton

Prayer

Closing Prayer: In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan, earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone; snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow, in the bleak midwinter, long ago.

     Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain; heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign. In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed, the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

     Angels and archangels may have gathered there, cherubim and seraphim thronged the air; but his mother only, in her maiden bliss, worshiped the beloved with a kiss.

     O what can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb; if I were a Wise Man, I would do my part; yet what I can I give him: I will give my heart. (In the Bleak Midwinter by Christina Rossetti)