January 6 : Epiphany

And today the Magi come bearing the world's pain as gifts.

Myrrh - anointing at death.
Bosnia – Herzegovina’s greed for land leads to death's anointing
of man with gun of woman and child displaced and starved;
the old of unendurable cold.
In Somalia famine's skeletons dehydrate in the sun - lives lost for other's power - life is cheap if it is not mine - there is no time to anoint with myrrh here. Bomb blast and gunfire ill Northem Ireland Obsession with possession of the upper hand has lost sight of the saving grace that came in vulnerable human babyhood a worse obscenity to claim the doing of it in Your Name.

Here myrrh is made with tears of mourning of those who know
the pain of vulnerability.
It is a gift of sadness laid before You Vulnerable God.
May we enter into Your saving Love and be redeemed.

Frankincense, sweet scent arising
from the goodness of the little ones;
the downtrodden, who willingly share, bite their tongues,
and in hiddenness minister to You in the other.
The fragrance of goodness rises dispelling evil's miasma
and gratuitously offered is a pleasing gift.

Gold, over which there is so much greed
giving rise to power and might
is not the gift laid before You –
rather it's the struggle to use all things reverently and freely
for the good of one and the good of all.
Not owned by many and so the value of this gift lies in it's rarity –
found in pockets all over the Continents.