12.01

Heaven on Earth (God & Carmen)

Luke 2:13-14

 And suddenly there was with the angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God and saying,

14 “Glory to God in the highest heaven,
    and on earth peace among those whom he favors!”

Moments before, this angel terrified several already-anxious shepherds. Even so, these heavenly beings spoke of peace: Jesus was born. God had become human.  Peace had come to earth.

When life on earth gets scary, we often seek “peace.”  My first thought usually is that I need quiet, soft lighting, or to slow down. There is a truer peace, as the shepherds learned. That true peace is Jesus, God reaching us in darkness and giving us the light of his Son.

From The Peace of Wild Things by Wendell Berry

When despair for the world grows in me
and I wake in the night at the least sound
in fear of what my life and my children’s lives may be,
I go and lie down where the wood drake
rests in his beauty on the water, and the great heron feeds.
I come into the peace of wild things
who do not tax their lives with forethought
of grief. I come into the presence of still water.
And I feel above me the day-blind stars
waiting with their light. For a time
I rest in the grace of the world, and am free.

—Carmen Thomas