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A Time for Everything – Part 2

 

As I continued to reflect on Christmas and the busyness that surrounds it, I remembered a Children’s Christmas Service where the message was ‘Too Busy for the Babe?’  There was a narrated drama where the innkeeper’s wife was frantically rushing around trying to make sure everyone in the inn was comfortable and had food to eat. When confronted with a couple having a baby in the stable she was pretty mad at her husband for squeezing them in, then basically thought that she was too busy to help them so they would just have to sort themselves out. We then had a spoken word and sermon on the same theme. It made me think again about how busy I was. Where does Jesus fit in to my schedule? Am I being disciplined about making time each day to seek the face of God and to build my relationship with Him. Challenging thoughts. I wrote the following words of a traditional Christmas carol in 2018 as even then I was grappling with this issue:

 

Jesus, blesséd babe, lays sleeping

In a manger filled with straw.

May that holy, sacred moment

Fill us with a sense of awe.

As we celebrate each Christmas

May we ever enter in

To that consecrated stable

And the child asleep within.

 

Oh that we would year by year

Take the time to meet Him there.

 

In the fields were shepherds watching

O’er their flocks throughout the night.

When a Heavenly Host appearing

Filled the sky with radiant light.

Oh that we could all be shepherds

Opened eyes, God’s love to see.

Then we too would hasten to Him

Enter in expectantly.

 

Oh that we would year by year

Take the time to meet Him there.

 

Wise men from the East arriving

Having travelled from afar,

Seeking Him as told by the prophet

Following His bright lit star.

If we, like them, with adoration

Reverently before Him fall,

And as the Magi with their treasure

Give to Him our hearts, our all.     

 

Oh that we would year by year

Take the time to meet Him there.

 

So my friends, take time to have an encounter with the living Lord this Christmas.

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