Walk. Speaking. Social interaction. Children develop new skills at an impressive pace in the first four years. For some children, it takes longer. An inclusive society looks for ways to support the development of children with developmental delays without overburdening them.
Over the course of our lives, we become increasingly familiar with the world. We get used to people and places. We also get used to the possibilities and limits that society and our own bodies impose on us. But the world is not a paradise. No place and no person remains permanent. We ourselves do not stay either.
Sometimes the very beginning of life is fragile and threatened.
Sometimes the loss of a person, a place or a job tears us out of our habits. We realise that we have put together the wrong picture of the world.
The Old Testament already knew that you should not make a picture for yourself. On this journey through space and time, we only see mysterious outlines. Only in the stillness of time do we recognise, writes Paul.
But we can't do without drawers. It is only important to know that my pigeonholes may fit my life, but not necessarily another life.
A child lies in a stable. A makeshift solution. Not romantic. Jesus should actually have been born in an inn. But there was no room. Luke does not criticise the innkeepers.
And yet: if they had known who was going to be born there, they would certainly have made room.
But it is part of the idea of Christmas that God comes into the world unrecognised.
We should expect the presence of God in every you.
He comes into his own and his own do not take him in.
It is a conscious divine decision.
God is not to be found in the palace.
God does not intervene in a power structure that is painfully felt by occupied Israel.
Nevertheless, he sets an impulse that becomes a source of strength, especially for people without power.
The adult Jesus sends his disciples into powerlessness.
His disciples should not seek their own power.
Nor should his disciples seek power for their own group, their own nation or their own religion.
The disciples should orientate themselves towards the child.
The child is dependent on others.
The child is powerless.
The child gains new ability in response to a reality that is often unknown to him.
While we would like to keep control, Jesus lets go of control.
He turns to people with unconditional love, but repeatedly withdraws into solitude.
When the people want to make him king, he withdraws.
Jesus also withdrew from his own family and yet in the end he cared for his mother.
He lets people go, but he does not let people fall.
Terms describe Jesus, but never really capture him.
Jesus eludes the traps and pigeonholes, touches and allows himself to be touched.
Jesus also remains capable of learning.
In a conversation with a woman, he realises that he is not only sent to the people of Israel.
Centuries later, the language of oppression became the language of the church. Latin was the language of the Roman soldiers who had occupied the land of Jesus.
Even today, we should not leave any language to evil. Every language offers the opportunity to meet the You in love.
He is messianic where he shows the oppressed people a way that brings inner peace without struggle.
In the end, he is royal where he no longer has any worldly power.
Jesus' life ends violently.
He does not send others to their deaths, but hands himself over to human violence.
Not an old age.
Only a few years of public life.
And yet a fulfilled life in which he loves and lets go... Others and also himself.
In the Last Supper, he sends a strong signal.
The bread and wine show how Jesus lives:
Share the bread! Drink the wine.
Internalise how I have lived.
Do this in remembrance of me!
This is me!
Jesus throws himself down from his throne to set the scene for others.
Christmas is an invitation to see the world anew through the eyes of a child.
This is not a naive view.
Christmas is an invitation to powerfully lift others up where we have an advantage.
Christmas is an invitation to go beyond the familiar horizon and to recognise in the stranger the treasure that God has placed in every heart.
Christmas is an invitation to look beyond our own family and our own country.
Christmas is an invitation to love even our enemies.
Do good to those who hate you.
Pray for those who persecute you.
Christmas is an invitation to seek God in powerlessness rather than in the powerful.
We grope our way blindly through the world and we all need each other.
We are the recipients of gifts and give to others what we ourselves cannot take with us into the eternal silence of time.
Christmas does not come in a perfect world.
Not 2000 years ago.
Not today.
In Magdeburg, a man tore people from their lives and brought grief to many families.
In Ukraine and Russia, people are suffering under the madness of a powerful group that wants to restore Russia's former greatness and is sending others to their deaths to do so.
Wars and conflicts are tearing the world apart.
Not only nations are fighting.
In the centre of Leipzig, people are powerless or overwhelmed.
Migrants and refugees are looking for a new place. Single parents are looking for support and help.
Relationships that began in love develop into a prison.
Siblings become strangers.
Parents and children live speechlessly side by side in the same city.
Sometimes it is love to go separate ways.
A child is born in a stable.
It takes childlike trust to see in this powerless child the God who sustains us.
But God's power is particularly powerful in the long term, especially in the weak.
Dictators win the sprint.
The marathon of the centuries is won by the person who places their trust in the divine You and loves unconditionally, because the divine spark shines in every You.
Life wins in the end!
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