“In Bethlehem we say: as long as one person still is searching nothing is totally lost. And we are searching for peace with many.”—Jihan Anastas
For [the Christmas Season], we affirm our solidarity with the whole human race in its long struggle to come humane and to reveal divinity in which all [humankind] shares… Christmas is the brooding Presence of the Eternal Spirit making the crooked paths straight, rough places smooth, tired hearts refreshed, dead hopes stir with newness of life. It is the promise of tomorrow at the close of everyday, the movement of life in defiance of death, and the assurance that love is sturdier than hate, that right is more confident than wrong, that good is more permanent than evil. — Howard Thurman (The Mood of Christmas and Other Celebrations, pp. xii, xiv)
Verse of the day
The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all they had heard and seen, just as it had been told them.
– Luke 2:20
Voice of the day
I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year.
– Charles Dickens, “A Christmas Carol” (1843)
Prayer of the day
As we prepare to celebrate the birth of your Son, may we celebrate the coming of God to earth, all year long.
Verse of the day
A friend loves at all times, and kinsfolk are born to share adversity.
– Proverbs 17:17
Voice of the day
Friendship is the place in which a great majority of us have our first glimpse of redemptive love and caring community.
– bell hooks, “All About Love: New Visions” (1999)
Prayer of the day
God, we thank you for friendship: for close friends who are with us in times of joy and trouble, and for friends who become as close as family.
Verse of the day
Is there anyone among you who, if your child asked for bread, would give a stone?
– Matthew 7:9
Voice of the day
When people were hungry, Jesus didn’t say, “Now is that political, or social?” He said: “I feed you.” Because the good news to a hungry person is bread.
– Desmond Tutu
Prayer of the day
To love you, Jesus, is to feed the hungry, heal the sick, clothe the naked, and give homes to the homeless.
“Don’t ask yourself what the world needs.
Ask yourself what makes you come alive, and then go do that.
Because what the world needs is people that have come alive.”
—Howard Thurman
“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.”—Alice Walker
“To develop the drop of compassion in our own heart is the only effective spiritual response to hatred and violence.”—Thich Nhat Hanh
“I believe the secret of happiness is a) serving our fellow human beings and loving and caring for everyone. . . I mean deep caring for each other. b) to understand our own psychology in a profound way, so we can be a more constructive human being; and c) to care for this incredible planet of ours.”—Dr. Helen Caldicott
On Friday, December 25, 1863, Longfellow—as a 57-year-old widowed father of six children, the oldest of which had been nearly paralyzed as his country fought a war against itself—wrote a poem seeking to capture the dissonance in his own heart and the world he observes around him that Christmas Day
Christmas Bells – I heard the bells on Christmas Day
— Read on poets.org/poem/christmas-bells
