Christmas Is Full of Gaps

Christmas is full of gaps,

The gap between waking
And opening presents,
The space in your belly,
To be filled with Turkey
And Mince Pies,

The space, in the middle of a cracker,
The ever lessening gap,
Decreasing between your thighs,

The gap between unwrapping,
Underwhelming gifts,
And sincerest of thankful replies,

The gap between what we expect to receive
And that which actually arrives,

The gap between what we can afford to spend
And our budgets limitations

The gap between western wealth
and so many impoverished nations,

The space where compassion should be
For the homeless on our streets
When we blow a weeks wages
On trainers for our feet,

The space between the good that we want to do
And the resources at our dispense
The distance between family members
Kept by sitting on the fence,

But the biggest and most glaring gap
is the smallest one of all
The pin-head size gap: The microdot,
Embedded in the uterus wall,
The virgin’s uterus wall,
The hopeless void into which
The Christ child stepped
To bridge the gap
For all.

Reflection: Mind The Gap

 

Christmas comes to us, so often, carrying such a heavy weight of expectation. If you are the kind of person who can easily step aside from the material trappings of the season and the rampant consumerism, even then you will have to deal with a level of raised expectations, if not from within yourself then perhaps from those around you. We want this Christmas ‘to be a good one’, whatever that may mean for us individually.

Building on from the previous reflection, the gap between our expectations and the reality of our experience can be quite jarring.

I don’t think the poem needs much explanation. The invitation, as we saw yesterday, is to come as you are.

If we need reminding, Jesus did not come for perfect souls, nor even particularly Godly ones. He came for sinners. Those who have missed the mark. If that doesn’t describe you, then I don’t think you have perceived what ‘the mark’ really is. This is the gap between what God ‘expects’ and gets from us. The perfection of Christ Jesus himself is the level we need to be aiming at. The bad news is that you can’t get there. The good news is that He can. His life and work, his sacrificial death, his resurrection and ascension mean that, in him, we are accepted. There is no good that we can add to the perfection of Jesus' sacrifice. His gift to us is that we are declared ‘good enough’, not just now but forever. The gap has been closed. You are accepted and loved. There is, in Jesus, grace and strength for today and bright hope for tomorrow.

Perhaps if the expectations we have, or those that are placed on us, are causing us to lose our peace, we can take solace in the fact that we don’t need to perform for him. The gap has been closed. You are loved, right now, where you are and as you are. You couldn’t be more loved, not even if you tried.

 

 

~Scripture~

 

Therefore, since we have a great high priest who has ascended into heaven, Jesus the Son of God, let us hold firmly to the faith we profess. For we do not have a high priest who is unable to empathize with our weaknesses, but we have one who has been tempted in every way, just as we are—yet he did not sin. Let us then approach God’s throne of grace with confidence, so that we may receive mercy and find grace to help us in our time of need~ Heb 4:14-16