JESUS, CHILD OF GOD

     Jesus, Child of God, we welcome you now. Long have we waited for you. Our cluttered minds and our fettered hearts yearn for the freedom you bring.

    Jesus, Child of God, release us from the barriers that keep us from hearing your voice in our world today. Slow down our frantic, busy minds and activities so that we can “find our rest in you.”

    Jesus, Child of God, you are our strength, our hope, our comfort, and our consolation.  You are, indeed, the hope of the world. Send your strength and healing to every broken place, every despondent heart.

    Jesus, Child of God, you are our desire, our joy, our hunger, our longing.  Even nations desire you. We desire your peace and your presence in our hungering world and our longing hearts.

    Jesus, Child of God, let us welcome you with holy hospitality.  May we prepare a place within our hearts and our lives for your loving presence. Amen.

–Beth Richardson,
Child of the Light

Tribute to Nelson Mandela

People cared about Nelson Mandela, loved him, because of his courage, convictions and care of others’....He perfectly understood that people are dependent on other people in order for individuals and society to prosper.

He transcended race and class in his personal actions, through his warmth and through his willingness to listen and to emphasise with others. And he restored others’ faith in Africa and Africans.

...Certainly, he was exceptional. But the spirit of greatness that he personified resides in all of us. Human beings are made for greatness. Nelson Mandela embodied and reflected our collective greatness. He embodied our hopes and our dreams. He symbolized our enormous potential, potential that has not always been fulfilled...

I believe he was saintly because he inspired others powerfully and revealed in his character, transparently, many of God’s attributes of goodness: compassion, concern for others, and a desire for peace, forgiveness and reconciliation.

As a mark of our respect for him, let us use this moment in our history to reach out to one another again, to prove to ourselves and the world that our greatness was not illusory – that it exists.

Let us love one another as we loved him. Let us celebrate Madiba, together, and not let him down.

-Archbishop Desmond Tutu