25 December 2025 – Christmas Day

The Bible and the Koran both tell of Mary, the angel and the birth of Jesus. The two tales diverge. In one, we travel with Mary and Joseph to Bethlehem and the manger and in the other, we travel with Mary into the desert and the miraculous creation of an oasis.

The most significant point of divergence is in the way speech is  put into the Christchild’s mouth. ‘Allah has made me blessed wherever I may be.’  Why are these two versions different?  How can we say one is truer than the other, when both tell of the mystery of God? 

We struggle to see what God is doing in our world, what he is calling us to do in our lives.  Where is he to be found in our world – a manger, a desert, a baby who is for all the world a blessing? It is a mystery!

Woven into the action of the angels and the shepherds, there is the stillness of the night, the stillness of the angels’ absence, Mary’s inner stillness and restraint, treasuring the shepherds’ words and pondering them in her heart.

This is how a mystery is revealed -  through stillness, watching, listening, pondering over time and space. God is infinite, beyond our understanding. But no one can encapsulate or reveal the whole truth in a finite sum of words.

We need  humility and awe, respect for difference and different people, building a fuller picture caught  in a beautiful poem by GK Chesterton, ‘The House of Christmas’ which celebrates the season’s embrace of the whole world.

To an open house in the evening
Home shall men come,
To an older place than Eden
And a taller town than Rome.
To the end of the way of the wandering star,
To the things that cannot be and that are,
To the place where God was homeless
And all men are at home.

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