WHAT CAN I GIVE HIM? It’s the humility of God that so touches me. As Christina Rossetti’s wonderful hymn has it:

Our God, heaven cannot hold him, nor earth sustain; heaven and earth shall flee away when he comes to reign: in the bleak mid-winter a stable place sufficed the Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Yet GOD is everywhere and in all things and in all people. God is fully present in every baby that was ever born in any stable, under any sky, anywhere on earth.

Before any of us are aware of the existence of different faiths, or of different nations, God meets us first as one of us. That’s the only way we can bear the greatness of God. But we are asked to bear God. In our arms. Tenderly. We’re to hold God’s Christ in every baby that was ever born on earth. We’re to honour all that mothers life. We’re to hold God, that’s to say, in one another. And every human being is made already entitled to such a holding, such a feeding, such an honouring. That’s why we speak of Jesus being born in Bethlehem – the House of Bread.

In other words, this world is (we might say “after all”) to be a place that “sustains” God, sustains Life, grants sight to to the blind, to the Bartimaeus – to every son of the worthy one – to “Everyman” maybe, thus establishing a new kind of “kingdom” to those we’ve known thus far. And also establishing a new kind of “Church” – God out in the stables of this world, out in “shepherd’s fields” and the daily “temples” of human industry. God being “born in us today”. Co-creating with us.

What can I give him, poor as I am? If I were a shepherd I would bring a lamb; if I were a wise man I would do my part; yet what I can I give him—give my heart.

Who and where is the “Him” you’ve wanted to “give your heart” to? And have you? Who and where are those to whom God has given his life and heart?

Let’s hold God and let’s hold one another tenderly, in whomsoever and wherever in our worldwide “Bethlehem” we find ourselves. That’s why God came and still comes. May the Christ Mass challenge you, even whilst you are filled each day with God’s peace; until what we think of as “earth” or “heaven” have passed away and we all know as we are known.