HEART!

After several years’ absence, I made it back to an old haunt—our fair city, Boston, the unofficial hub of New England. It was a delight to connect with church friends from my days in that metropolis as a dermatology resident about a decade ago. Brothers and sisters in Christ with whom I had the privilege of serving our great God: we were Bible Study members together, led worship and made music together, worked on leadership teams together, sat on a pastoral search committee together, laughed and cried and worked and played together. Those were fun days!

However, I question the sanity of one who chooses to venture into this part of the world in winter. I must be losing it—Vienna during Thanksgiving and now Boston around Christmas. Bostonians have already been through three major storms this year, one wicked nor’easter dropping over 24 inches of the detestable (at least to me) white stuff just days before my arrival. Consequently, our aircraft meandered in the skies above Boston’s Logan airport for the good part of an hour seeking to squeeze into the line of planes hoping to land on the only runway open. And the cold wind! Brrrrr ....

Yup, winter has arrived. I can fully identify with Christina Rossetti’s opening lines …

In the bleak midwinter,
frosty wind made moan,
Earth stood hard as iron,
water like a stone;
Snow had fallen,
snow on snow, snow on snow,
In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Just like this past week! But that less-than-desirable circumstance, long time ago, did not restrain our God.

Our God, heaven cannot hold him,
nor earth sustain;
Heaven and earth shall flee away
when he comes to reign.
In the bleak midwinter
a stable place sufficed
The Lord God Almighty,
Jesus Christ.

Hardly what one would imagine as circumstances fitting for the arrival of the King of Kings.

Angels and archangels
may have gathered there,
Cherubim and seraphim
thronged the air;
But his mother only,
in her maiden bliss,
Worshiped the beloved
with a kiss.
Rossetti, 1872

Not only were His first days strange, this King’s last days on earth were equally incongruous—crucified on a cross. The King of Kings disregarded, disrespected, disbelieved, disobeyed.

The Gospels poignantly echo with the implied challenge: How will you, dear Christian Reader, respond to this King?

What can I give him,
poor as I am?
If I were a shepherd,
I would bring a lamb;
If I were a Wise Man,
I would do my part;
Yet what I can I give him:
give my heart.
Rossetti

All of us humans are called by God, firstly, to place our trust in Jesus Christ as our Savior—“giving our heart.” This is to believe that Jesus Christ, God incarnate, paid the price for our sins, precluding, for those with faith in Gods’ provision of salvation, eternal punishment and separation from God forever.

For God so loved the world,
that He gave
His only begotten Son,
that whoever
believes in Him
shall not perish,
but have eternal life.
John 3:16

And, secondly, Christian responsibility now calls us believers to live lives marked by the love of God in Christ—“giving our hearts” to Him daily.

And you shall love
the Lord your God
with all your heart,
and with all your soul,
and with all your mind,
and with all your strength.
Mark 12:30

May this Christmas be a reminder to us all that …

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
That were a present far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.
Isaac Watts, 1707