december

What an incredible 15 days of December it has been.

The past weeks were filled with wonderful and unexpected encounters, joyful company, beautiful melodies, stunning sunrises, touching stories and light! Also I was thinking a lot about christmas and the art of giving.

In this world and especially during christmas time there is so much wanting to bring your focus down to just you. Our Christmas celebrations are about getting things we do not have: Gifts for people, food for feasts, new clothes: We stuff, we fill, we get. But in the bible we read of Jesus who did the opposite and made himself nothing. Jesus left all of the glory of heaven behind and came to earth to be born in a stable. This is radical generosity. This is God emptying himself, coming to this world in the most vulnerable way. He bestowed upon humanity the dignity of becoming one of us. So devising generosity is a characteristic of heaven. Maybe we should change our focus more often, look up and set our hearts on things above. We are blessed with so many things. So why should we keep it for ourselves?

We are all connected and being generous with our time, money, love, words and actions will transform us from the inside out and ultimately bring blessing back to us. The past few weeks I truly experienced that there is truth in the saying that „It is by giving that we receive“ (Francis of Assisi). We can be confident, no matter what comes our way, that God is for us and that he always provides!

\\ Dietrich Bonhoeffer, God Is In The Manger

God is in the manger, wealth in poverty, light in darkness, succor in abandonment. No evil can befall us; whatever men may do to us, they cannot but serve the God who is secretly revealed as love and rules the world and our lives.