St. Stephens Day Dreams.

I've always loved the day after Christmas. The stress of Christmas day is over, the madness of preparations are done and best of all the church's lectionary features not one but two stonings for your dollar. The children sermon possibilities alone make it an amazing day. Then after the Feast of St. Stephen, the church celebrates or I guess commemorates the "slaughter of the Holy Innocents". Ah, such a festive time of year. I guess the point of it all is that birth and death are inextricably linked. The child came (was spared by a flight to Egypt) to preach, teach, heal and then die for the sake of the world God so loves. Christmas and Easter (the two most popular church going days of the year) are joined together, just as in Christ heaven and earth are joined together in the Word become flesh. Another favorite part of the story for me is all the dreaming. The Magi dream and find their way safely back because they paid attention to the dream. Joseph gets Mary and Jesus out of harms way because he paid attention to a dream and then brought the Holy Family back because of a dream. I take this to mean that God has a special place for dreamers and people who help to make the dreams of others a reality. Perhaps what the story wants to tell us the most is that we can't remain silent in the face of threats to modern day Holy Innocents. For me that gets lived out in my speaking on behalf of Godparents for Tanzania! (To learn more go to http://www.godparents4tz.org).