Thank you,
scandalous God,
for giving yourself to the world
not in the powerful and extraordinary,
but in weakness and the familiar:
in a baby: in bread and wine.
Thank you
for offering, at journey’s end, a new beginning;
for setting, in the poverty of a stable,
the richest jewel of your love;
for revealing, in a particular place,
your light for all nations.
Thank you
for bringing us to Bethlehem, House of Bread,
where the empty are filled,
and the filled are emptied;
where the poor find riches,
and the rich recognize their poverty;
where all who kneel and hold out their hands
are unstintingly fed.
Kate Compston, Bread for Tomorrow: Praying with the World’s Poor (London: SPCK, 1992).