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O Little town of Bethlehem (22 December)

The thought this week was written by Claire Blatchford, EBA Regional Minister

“O little town of Bethlehem how still we see the lie…”

So goes the opening line of the Christmas carol many of us have been singing since our childhood, and my guess a few times this past weekend and in the days ahead. In our minds eye, Bethlehem provides the romantic setting for the first Christmas morn, with the trappings of a stable, an expectant mother, shepherds on the hills, angelic voices and unexpected visitors from the East. But the actual scene was not at all romantic.  Scripture tells us that there was no room apart from a cave where the animals lived for the birth of God’s Son; that there was a jealous king who immediately wanted to get rid of the baby boy; soon after the young family would become refugees in a foreign land.

Bethlehem was the place where God entered our world with all its tensions and clamour, but it was also the place He began to turn human lives around in a whole new way. To do so, meant God didn’t start on the outside but from within. He begins in the hidden place of a mother’s womb. He goes to the forgotten places, a town in an obscure province of the Roman empire. The opening scene is so unpretentious with a few shepherds, a pregnant woman who wasn’t even a statistic on a Roman census, and her husband whom we know very little about.

So as we make our final preparations for Christmas, celebrate the greatest gift and begin a new year, may we be reminded of the hidden places, the unknown places, and the forgotten people with whom God meets. The world is full of small places where God has worked His will through the lives of ordinary people. And it is right where we are, in the street where we live, among the people we meet, through the things we do and the people we are that He brings the light of His glory. Let us not forget, everywhere and at all times He Is Emmanuel, God with us.

Joy, peace and love to you all this Christmas and New Year.