Along Right Pathways by Susan+
And so the ‘right path’ leads us to Bethlehem and to the beloved scene so etched in our collective memory: A wondrous star blazes overhead and inside the air is heavy with the smell of barn and sweet hay. We hear cooing doves and cattle ‘lowing’ and note the lantern light casting strange shadows.
We see in the background, in our mind’s eye, the donkey who carried the pregnant teenager on the journey, and little lambs gathered around the feed trough. And there are two exhausted souls, robed in garments caked with travel dust; Joseph always in brown homespun, Mary, eternally in blue. And at her breast, a tiny babe of a Saviour, wrapped in swaddling cloths, cuddled close…God, the Word made flesh.
The journey does not end in that manger scene, of course, because the path is the one we travel throughout our lives. And even in the midst of this pandemic, even as we understand that there is much ‘kingdom work’ still to do, even as the route ahead is as yet unknown, we embrace the promise that we are never travelling alone. God is with us, Emmanuel. Thanks be to God and alleluia!