In Jesus birth, life, death, and resurrection, we come to know the way of love. We learn that even the most unlikely of people – even we ourselves – can complete great acts of love in Jesus’ name.
In her book Love Heals, Becca Stevens, Episcopal priest and founder of Thistle Farms, reminds us that “Christmas doesn’t just come in neatly wrapped presents. It comes in our beautiful messy attempts to love each other.”
Whatever our challenges, joys, or sorrows, this Christmas season can be filled with our beautiful, messy attempts to love each other. First, we start by loving ourselves, for Jesus directed that we are to love our neighbor as ourselves. We can start by cutting ourselves some slack. We are doing our best. Perfection is not expected. We just need to show up and do the best we can. We must bring all the creativity and grace we can muster. And then we can step up with our beautiful messy attempts to love each other.
This message is excerpted from “Christmas, beautiful and messy” by Linda Post Bushkofsky in the December 2020 Gather magazine. Today we commemorate Stephen, Deacon and Martyr.
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