​I’m a part of a really fantastic Bible study that meets every Sunday (with or without me, often without me because of my hectic life), and right now we’re doing a Bible study that focuses on the O Antiphons from the She Reads Truth series. What I love about the Bible study is that it takes the O Antiphons, many of which are in O Come, O Come Emmanuel, and relates them back to the old covenant in the Old Testament.
 
Growing up, even before my conversion to Christ, I used to delight in reading the Old Testament. I made a point one year when I was nine or ten, of reading the Bible all the way through from start to finish. In Church, I hadn’t given a lot of attention to the Old Testament, but reading it through carefully and in sequence, it was hard not to get into the stories. There was something unfolding. This was a story that had a long arc and plenty of interesting side stories. There were brilliantly strong women, Pharaohs, floods, manna in the desert, prophets, chariots of fire and so much more. You name it, the Old Testament had it covered. Drama, adventure, romance, battles, and wisdom. What also became clear, especially by the time I hit Exodus, and then echoed again in the prophets, was the tremendous love that God has for His children. Even when they were acting foolish (as most children do), He loved them and pursued them. Reading it all in sequence, while I couldn’t ignore some of the more dramatic elements, what always came out most strongly to me was the love story of a Father for His children. He is a father who always keeps His promises and would never abandon us.

​Without that context, the story in this Gospel doesn’t make sense to me. Why would God bother to come and be so little and vulnerable except out of His immense love for His children? To keep the promise of the old covenant, He flips the story and becomes the Son of Man, a child to His creation. We see this play out in a much smaller scale when our own parents become dependent on us through illness and as they age. It jars us seeing the strong made weak and being given the responsibility to care for the one who cared for us first. He entrusted Himself to Mary and Joseph in a time when being an unwed mother was dangerous, trusting she would protect Him. Elizabeth is filled with the Holy Spirit, who teaches her to rejoice, to sing over the child in Mary's womb along with her own long-awaited son. Both women, a mirror of the promise – one an earthly promise for a child, the other a long-kept promise to a nation from their God. 
​
Stephanie Potter

"See, I come to do your will”
 
In this everything changes.
Heaven and earth;
Animals and angels;
You and me.
Nothing is the same anymore.
 
“He abolishes the first in order to establish the second”
 
When I was sixteen, I offered myself to God for the first time in a school gym just before Christmas; I lay down what I had, and picked up what He was giving me. I was in that gym with people who were growing a church, and the communion plate was being passed from hand to hand down the rows of chairs.  The pastor welcomed any to participate in taking the bread and juice, as long as they knew that they were broken, that they had asked Jesus to forgive them, that they had invited Him into their heart, and knew that because of what Jesus offered of Himself, they were made new.  I had been hearing of Jesus and seeing Him through these people since the fall. As I watched the small plate of bread cubes and the tray of juice cups making their way through us, I realized that before they were passed to my hand from that of my friend next to me, I wanted that to be true of me. And so I jumped off the cliff — and He caught me. Everything changed. Nothing was the same anymore.
 
That Christmas Eve changed me. I was the last one left in our living room with the tree. My younger brother and my Mom and Dad had finished their tea and gone to bed. I sat and looked at the lights and the colour amongst the green branches, and sipped the remnants of my tea. I started to notice the music playing — CBC Radio 2, choirs and orchestras and carols. All my life up to that point these songs had been in the background of every Christmas.  White noise at the mall, in the car, at parties. I heard the words, could have sung along with some of them, but they had just been part of the texture and furniture of a season. Out from the massive speakers my cousin had built, the words of the carols drifted toward me that night — my first actual Christmas Eve. And it was like the Spirit of God drove a stake right through me, pierced me where I sat, and I couldn’t move for Joy and Wonder. I stayed awake the entire night, sitting there on the couch holding a cold cup of tea and finally hearing the words and weeping. Amazed by what my God had done. What He had given. A Son. A Light. A King. Life. Eternity in a bed of hay — unexpected, seemingly impossible, but entirely sure, firmly established and immutable.  A Son coming to create the desire of His Father, to bring it into being among us, in us! Not a veneer or add-on to patch up our system for dealing with our brokenness. Not a system at all. A Person. A Child. A Savior. By God’s desire, we are set aside by Him and for Him, brought to Sacredness. And it’s all through the bringing forward and laying down of His very own Self.

​He came down to earth from heaven
Who is God and Lord of all
And his shelter was a stable
And his cradle was a stall
With the poor, and mean, and lowly
Lived on earth our Savior holy.
(Once In Royal David’s City – Cecil Frances Alexander)
 
And everything changes.  Nothing is the same anymore.

​Noreen Smith

When I first looked at this passage, I wondered what I could possibly say about it. At first glance, it seems to be a simple and straightforward directive to the people of this place and time. But everything written in the Word of God has something inside, some nugget hidden from a cursory glance but revealed, with probing and pondering. So I read and re-read it out loud, using Lectio Divina, and certain words emerged from the page in bold print. “Little”, “rule”, “great”.

Bethlehem in the Ephrathah region is a little place, but Bethlehem will be the birth place of the Messiah. The Lord Jesus comes from the line of Jesse, father of David, a shepherd who became a king. The little who end up ruling. The insignificant who do great things.
 
The Lord came as a little baby.

I feel spiritually little when I think of how much more I could be doing for the Lord. Sometimes I think that nothing I do or say will have lasting significance. I do not pray enough, or read my Bible enough, or anything enough! I miss opportunities to show Christ to the wounded in our midst, mostly because I’m not staying in the moment. I’m thinking of the next thing and suddenly I’ve moved past the person in need. And still, God can use the little in me. In the beautiful song Be Born In Me, these words of Mary our Mother jump off the page:

“I am not brave, I’ll never be. The only thing my heart can offer is a vacancy.”

I want to say that and mean it. Lord Jesus, be born in me.

​Judy Savoy