Note: These prayers, one for each day of the twelve-day Christmas season, in which my True Love is God, follow the pattern of that well-known 18th century English carol with a number of the days illumined by the observances of the Church calendar.
O gracious God, on this day, repeating an annual cycle – one day’s step from the end of a calendar year and one day’s step from the next – the world equally annually (alway?) seems enshrouded in winter’s gray of indifference and intolerance, inequality and iniquity.
Yet You, O gracious God, pour Your Self into the flesh of a baby of lowest earthly estate born to an unwed mother, laid in a feeding trough for animals,(1) and, hounded by authorities seeking his death, made to be a refugee.(2)
This, Your stupendous story pregnant with expectation, this Your stupefying mystery impregnable to all opposition, bears…is the light of hope that You and Your will, Your Word of Love incarnate(3) conquer all.
Amen.
Footnotes:
(1) See Luke 2.1-7
(2) See Matthew 2.13
(3) John 1.14
paulrobertsabernathy 
This is such an amazing prayer Paul including pregnancy and expectation as we head toward the new year!! I really appreciated your inclusion of the flesh of a baby because it feels like we can all be born again before we all become “hardened to life”. I also appreciate the inclusion of the reference to refugees simply because of how we currently treat them in this country. We need to do better, and be more Jesus like in welcoming immigrants! M
Thank you for giving us hope and love as we head into 2018. May we all approach the world with the pure joy of a baby! I think Jesus would love that!!
Much love!
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Always, Loretta, I thank you for you and your comments.
With this prayer, I sought to explore the mystery of God’s amazing story of pouring the divine Self into a baby of low estate…the magnificence of the cosmos brought close and personal in human flesh. Though, in one sense, I understand the idea, the reality of it absolutely confounds my capacity of reason. Hence, I perceive in this miracle, this mystery hope. I think…I feel I will explore this aspect of the Christmas story in another prayer in the next 6 days, perhaps (probably!) from a different angle, for, again, I am amazed.
Love
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