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When the wise men saw that the star had stopped, they were overwhelmed with joy. On entering the house, they saw the child with Mary his mother; and they knelt down and paid him homage. Then, opening their treasure-chests, they offered him gifts of gold, frankincense, and myrrh. (Matthew 2:1o-11)
I can’t let Mary go. Christmas has passed. The ornaments are stored in their boxes, but Mary remains. Her silent radiance still shimmers from the tapestry on the family room wall. Rapt in love, Mary’s eyes caress the infant Jesus, lying in the straw of a manger, while a shepherd leans on his staff to peer over her shoulder at the child.
One of the Magi kneels in adoration at the creche and offers
his gift. Two others, gifts in hand, stand in reverence until it is their turn
to kneel in the warm light around Mary and her child.
The shepherd, the magi … and me, all of us drawn to this
circle of light that love might heal and restore our humanity.
Mary and this child, who is Love’s blessed face, is an icon, a
holy image on which we gaze to be made human again. Drawn into this circle of
light, we see and feel what God is doing in us and in everything. The Holy One
is drawing us home into circles of love and light, circles of care and healing,
where our vulnerabilities encounter Love’s great grace alive in human hearts
and hands.
We are not and never were intended to be alone. Home is the circle
of light that appears in every circle of care and belonging where love lives.
I see this sometimes when I watch the news and witness how human
hearts gather around the needs of those who fall, who struggle or suffer outrageous
fates, like a football player in the prime of life who collapses in cardiac
arrest in front of a stadium full of people and millions of television viewers.
Grown men kneel, cry and pray; paramedics rush to work their wonders, and watchers
stand vigil at emergency room doors.
But I’m even more impressed by my young friend, Sydney, and
the circle of light around her. It’s not just the little smile that crosses her
lips as she works her phone and laptop from a hospital bed, but everything and
everyone around her.
Eight days ago, she had a heart transplant, a harrowing experience
for anyone, especially so if you are only 14. She is doing well and has every
hope of being able to do things and live in ways that have not been possible
for her.
It’s possible because of a host of people that daily surround her
in this circle of light.
Nurses, doctors, therapists and specialist of many kinds: OT,
PT respiratory, art therapy, psychological services: I neither know nor can name
them all. But they’re all there, present in that circle with Sydney’s fantastic
parents and twin brother, grandparents and family near and far; friends at work and school; members
of her congregation and hundreds of others who have and continue to pray for
her. And, most poignantly, there is a donor and family who gave an incalculable
gift so that Sydney might live abundantly.
Quite some circle, all of it—all of them—aglow with light and
life, love and hope, tears and joy, more beautiful than I have words to say, alight
with the love that streams through the darkness of the centuries to this time,
this place, this girl.
The warm circle of light around Mary and Jesus—and Sydney, too—
reveals what our loving God has had in mind for us all along. And every time we
find ourselves in such a circle, we are home, truly home … in the Light whose
center is everywhere and whose circumference is nowhere.
David L.
Miller
