I love this poem by Teresa of Avila:
I know a cure for sadness:
Let your hands touch something that
makes your eyes
smile.
I bet there are a hundred objects close by
that can do that.
Look at
beauty’s gift to us—
her power is so great she enlivens
the earth, the sky, our
soul.
—Love Poems from God: Twelve Sacred Voices from the East and West
Teresa talks about the gift of beauty—its perpetual presence and effects on us.
The gift of beauty is utter grace, given pro bono by God for no other reason than to delight and move us to awe.
The Advent season is filled with preparation, talk, and often the stress of gift-giving for Christmas, so this year’s Christmas quotations focuses on gifts, and THE gift of Emmanuel that puts all other gifts into perspective.
Christmas is the time we acknowledge the greatest gift humanity has ever received in God becoming flesh. When God became flesh and lived among us, God became knowable, personally and intimately, to all of us and each of us.
God willingly and with forethought chose to become a relatable God, a person like one of us.
As Emmanuel, God experienced birth and growing pains, rejection and betrayal, uncertainty and vulnerability. Emmanuel learned, make mistakes, and benefitted by some do-overs.
What other god has ever offered as much, ever gifted humanity with as much?
And yet, David Steindl-Rast asks in his book Gratefulness, The Heart of Prayer, “Why is it so difficult to acknowledge a gift as a gift?”
Discover the wisdom of Steindl-Rast’s answer and the wisdom of many others when you download your free copy of “Christmas Quotations for Reflection and Preaching.”