"Something Must Have Happened Here"
A Meditation for Christmas Eve or Christmas Day

By Bass Mitchell

Texts: All the readings for Christmas Eve/Day

Perhaps the first European eyes to look upon it came during the
1540's Coronado Expedition. It is sometimes a mile deep gorge that
extends some 277 miles, leaving fantastic shapes and multi-colored
peaks, canyons, ravines and layers of rock showing a hundred
million year record of earth's history. The Colorado River, still
carrying gravel and mud, making it a cutting machine, still flows
through it often in the form of rapids. On the sides of the cliffs you
can still see Pueblo and cliff-dweller ruins. It has been called
perhaps the most "awe-inspiring of Earth's spectacles." It is rightly
called "The Grand Canyon," and is not likely to be forgotten once
seen.

A man stood with his young son at the edge of the Grand Canyon
one day, stunned by the beauty that lay before them. The boy said
to his father, "Dad, something must have happened here!"

I can't help but wonder if we had visitors from another planet this
time of year, I think they might say the same thing, "Something
must have happened here."

Surely there is no time during the year when there are more lights
lighting up our planet than this time.

There is no time of the year when there is more joyous music filling
the air.

And what time other than Christmas is there more a spirit of love
and sharing?

Anybody with any sensitivity at all coming upon this scene on
planet earth would have to say, "Something must have happened
here."

I wonder what kind of answers these visitors would get if they
walked up to persons on the street, saying, "Something must have
happened here. Can you tell us what it was?"

"Something must have happened here."

Indeed. It did. But it's origin will not be found in strings of lights,

in the MUZAC that's constantly blasting,

in wrapped presents or shopping malls.

If these visitors are to understand Christmas, they will have to be
taken back in time to an animal shelter in an obscure part of the
world,

to a village called Bethlehem...

to the birth of an infant to peasant parents...

to a baby whose life would become a mighty river eroding and
cutting and moving away the sins of the world, leaving what is truly
the most awe-inspiring sights on Earth - human beings who truly
love God and one another.

"Something must have happened here!"

It did. Something so powerful that it still touches and transforms
lives.

Something so wondrous that it still can be found behind the tinsel
and trees,

beneath the music and singing,

deep within the joy and celebration...

....somehow it still has the power to bring us kneeling at a manger
before the King of kings.

"Something must have happened here!"

That's what I would like people to say when they see me, my life;

when they see us,

when they see our church this Christmas and this whole new year -
in all we do.

Would that we could hear them say all year long,

"Look at those people. Look at their joy, the radiant light they
have, how they love one another and others, how they give of
themselves. Surely something must have happened here in them."

"Something must have happened here!"

"God of love, flow in us this Christmas like the mighty Colorado,
cutting away and removing anything and everything not suited to
your service. Cleanse our hearts, O Lord, and make each one a
Bethlehem, each soul a manger where your son might be reborn so
that others might see that something, Someone must have happened
here in us and can happen in them, too. Amen."



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Bass Mitchell, Hot Springs, VA
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