If you are familiar with the writings of Beatrix Potter you may recognise this from The Tale of Peter Rabbit:
‘But Peter, who was very naughty, ran straight away to Mr. McGregor’s garden, and squeezed under the gate!
First he ate some lettuces and some French beans; and then he ate some radishes;
And then, feeling rather sick, he went to look for some parsley.
But round the end of a cucumber frame, whom should he meet but Mr. McGregor!’
Peter’s mother told her bunnies to be good; Peter’s sisters were well behaved but he was more adventurous. The outcome was a sojourn in a watering can, camomile tea and an early night.
How has Christmas been for you?
There is a bit of Peter Rabbit in us all. We do enjoy being given freedom but there is always the risk of Mr MacGregor on the warpath, or being caught in a gooseberry net, because of that enticing food. When Peter was despondent it was the friendly sparrows who urged him to exert himself and so he got free again and though ultimate freedom was a way off, the interim was better than being put into a pie.
We are told that we have more challenges ahead before COVID is under control but now is not the time for shedding big tears, rather it is the moment for listening to the tweets of hope. We have just celebrated the birth of Christ, the coming into the world of God’s Son, the embodiment of hope and the promise of an end to the risk of meeting destruction ‘round the end of a cucumber frame’.
The theology is rather deeper than the writings of Beatrix Potter and when we read, ‘to all who received him, who believed in his name, he gave power to become children of God’ (John 1:12) we are reading of power far greater than that needed to wriggle out of the gooseberry net of restrictions; this is the power to overcome death itself.
A baby in a manger is a small start but he gives us hope, greater than we can understand.
Happy Christmas and love to you all.
A prayer
Lord Jesus Christ, we welcome you into our hearts and lives again; may we hear your tweets of hope and not lose site of the safety beyond the garden gate of our mortality, which you have made ours because you came among us.
Amen.