A prayer, and a thought, for Christmas…
Lord our God, you wanted to live not only in heaven, but also with us, here on earth; not only to be high and great, but also to be small and lowly, as we are; not only to rule, but also to serve us; not only to be God in eternity, but also to be born as a person, to live, and to die.
In your dear Son, our Savior Jesus Christ, you have given us none other than yourself, that we may wholly belong to you.
This affects all of us, none of us has deserved this.
What remains for us to do but wonder, to rejoice, to be thankful, and to hold fast to what you have done for us?
To put it in the simplest way, what unites God and [humanity] is that He does not will to be God without us, that He creates us rather to share with us–and therefore with our being and life and act–His own incomparable being and life and act; that He does not allow His history to be His and ours ours, but causes them to take place as a common history.
That is the special truth which the Christian message has to proclaim at its very heart.
–Karl Barth
Merry Christmas, everyone.