Christmas blessing

What are your blessings this Christmas? This question has been uppermost in my mind since I returned from the Philippines last Sunday.

Perhaps it's the physical fatigue (did not get enough sleep abroad) but I've been feeling lackadaisical this entire Christmas week.

Yes, it was great meeting up with friends and having the opportunity to catch up, eat some yummy food but I just couldn't get into the whole spirit of Christmas thing. I am just glad I had already done my all Christmas shopping for I did not have the energy to contend with crowds or the shopping frenzy.

And then Christmas came.

This is season we celebrate the birth of our Saviour King, when Word became flesh. I am not sure if this is a truth I have understood in all its profundity. However, this year, I think I may be closer to the truth and because of that, I have been experiencing a real melange of emotions.

While I am grateful and thankful for where I am today, and for this wonderfully rich relationship I have with Jesus, this same relationship demands more of me than perhaps I am ready for?

To be the hands and feet of our Saviour, to allow Him to be born in me requires me to go with the movements of my heart which can be taxing emotionally.

I returned home from the Philippines energized for having attempted to show the face of love to those who were marginalized and yet at the same time, I have been emotionally zapped out from witnessing the despair and bleakness of those living in squalor.

How can I possibly indulge myself when there are so many who go to bed hungry with no hope of a great tomorrow?

What kind of change can my puny efforts over a couple of days effect? Even if I were to be a true missionary as those I lived in community with for those few days in Philippines, what can I truly do?

It wasn't until today that I realized allowing Christ to be born in me also means giving Him room to perform miracles that I could not humanly imagine or conceive.

That all that is required of me is to keep the faith (by being a good steward and faithful servant), continue to pray for grace and to let Him lead me every step of the way.

And so I rejoice that God has given us His only son because He so loved us and that this newborn babe will save the world in His own inimitable style.

My true blessing this Christmas is to know I should dream the impossible dream for He has already shown me in so many ways how the impossible can come to pass.

Veníte adoremus Dóminum