Daily Worship

On the move…

Jock Stein December 17, 2024 0 0
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Luke 2: 3 (NRSVA)

3 All went to their own towns to be registered.

We glean from this short verse that registration for the imperial census took place in hometowns. We have many shortcuts today, like giving your place and date of birth on a form. That said, the internet is now so full of the modern equivalent of the brigands who might have waylaid Mary and Joseph on their journey, that our processes often feel like a long and difficult journey, under the guise of ‘keeping ourselves and our information safe’.

However, our computer trials pale before the real journeys that migrants are making, braving minefields and other killing fields, let alone the rigours of small boats and big seas. Here is an extract from a poem I wrote on Psalm 74, under the general heading of ‘Migration and Identity’:

 

Refugees
are swimming
into Europe,
pressing on
our politics.

 

Our flags have gone
from mast and heart,
we never heed
the past; our art
is weary, and
the last dread part
is still to come:
when we are all
turned refugee
from history
and who we are,
a hidden steal.

 

Our flags have gone
from mast and heart,
we never heed
the past; our art
is weary, and
the last dread part
is still to come:
that solemn slippage
out of memory
and into something
larger, little known
but held by God.


Our flags have gone
from mast and heart,
and all we know
is past. The art
of faith in God?
Entrusting every part
of who we were.

 

PRAY

 

Lord, we pray today for refugees of various kinds, on the move, or waiting to be assessed. We pray for victims of torture. We remember their families and situations back home, our own government and its processes. We seek a fairer world, a world which gleams with the light of justice and the blessing of peace. We seek better people to rule, to lead, to follow the holy family on their journey, to worship the holy child in his purity, to obey the risen Christ in his majesty.

And so we pray as he taught, Our Father in heaven . . . Amen.