… the Christmas presence you've always wanted.
… love sprouts eternal.
… God among us, God with us, God one of us, God for us.
… matter matters: the Word became flesh and lived among us.
… God with us. We have seen his face. Painted in the Gospels.
… “redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe” (Bruce Cockburn).
… only the curious get surprised: shepherds and magi.
… the eternal breaks through into time. Time bleeds into eternity.
… light mugs the darkness. Nothing the darkness can do about it.
… hope looks despair in the eye and doesn't blink first.
… God surprising earth with heaven.
… hearing amid the darkness the words “Fear not”.
… being surprised by the ordinary being broken into by joy.
… turning expectations of God on their head.
… following a star without any security about where it might lead.
… finding our curiosity inspired in surprising ways.
… finding the courage to venture out of predictability and discovering that God and the world are bigger than we thought.
… coming, o ye faithless, and finding that God has already found us.
… giving birth amid the muck and mess to new hope, new promise, new life, new world.
… hearing songs of light in the nighttime of fear.
… churches rehearsing the story of why everyone is redeemable and nobody has to be lost.
… daring to dance in this world to a tune that haunts us from another.
… welcoming the baby of Bethlehem… and then letting him grow up.
… facing the asylum seeker, vulnerable child, hunted by Herod, the poor & outsiders – asking if Jesus would be welcome now.
… interrupting the world with joy it doesn't expect and light it doesn't want.
… seeing natural order restored (with #LFC on top of the #epl).
If God can be brought down to earth, then we should be able to say something about it in a tweet. So I did. But, I got a bit carried away. Anyway, I'll be preaching on this stuff tomorrow morning at Bradford Cathedral.
