Pray As You Stay - Christmas Day (Morning)

Morning Prayer - Of the Father’s Love Begotten

May the grace and peace of God our father and the Lord Jesus Christ be with you!
 
A very Happy Christmas to you. Welcome to this Christmas Day special of Pray As You Stay. Some of us will be surrounded by people this Christmas, some of us will be alone. Wherever you are, however you are, we can all rejoice in this truth, so wonderful it takes our breath away, that ...
“God loved the world so much, that he gave his only son, that we should not perish, but have eternal life”. As we move through the day, you might like to hold these words closely to you.
 
Christmas tells you and me what our God is really like. The creator of the heavens: the sun, the moon, all the stars and the earth and everything on it, became a tiny, fragile, new born child. Amazingly, he was born into poverty, into a family with nowhere to go, entirely dependent on Mary his mother and her husband Joseph.
 
What’s more, he was born into a world in a mess. Palestine had been overrun by a foreign power and its people were oppressed and at the mercy of a power hungry and violent king. Like us, they were longing and yearning for something so much better.
And why did the Son of God come to us in this way? He did it for you and for this reason - he loves you.
 
He came to give us a gift, the very best gift of all, a share in his own divine life, in which all our longings and yearnings for something so much bePer will be satisfied.
 
Return to these words: “God loved the world so much, that he gave his only son, that we should not perish, but have eternal life”.
 
In the beauty of those words, let us stop rest awhile and may the beauty of these words be yours today...