of the year with tidying up to be done, preparations for the new year to be made and celebrations with family and friends.
How much closure, transition and celebration will occur in Zimbabwe this Christmas? For many it will be just more of the same; the daily struggle to provide food for the family, medicine for the sick and to stay alive. On Christmas Day there will be no extras, no lightening of the crushing weight many feel.
Yet preparing is still an invitation to us. The beautiful words of Isaiah are not just poetry. They were not spoken in times of tranquillity.
The wolf lives with the lamb
Calf and lion cub feed together.
He lived and spoke with menace all round him. Yet his words described a new era already breaking in on the old. It would be a time of justice and would bring peace.
The song of Mary too would be full of present verbs despite the crushing Roman armies occupying her homeland:
He casts the might from their thrones
and raises the lowly
He fills the starving with good things
[and] sends the rich away empty
What made these ancestors of ours so confident of the dawning of Gods reign? Can we share their optimism? The key surely is in attitude and action. Mary did not just wait. When the opportunity came she took it. She had much to suffer as so many of our mothers have. But all the time she knew. She knew that God works with those who open their hearts to him and get moving. They are the ones who know He is there just a step away. We call it hope. It is not like sitting around and hoping things will improve or that someone will do something to bring about change. It is the hope that is awake and pushes and shoves at every turn to win what are our hearts yearn.
Post published in: Opinions