Perhaps we don't truly appreciate Christmas. Dietrich Bonhoeffer spent a few in a concentration camp, yet seems to understand more than most. Now is not the season to celebrate some Galilean's birthday for the sake of it, or simply "believing" in Gee-zuzz. It is about a dirty stable rather than a palace or Cedar Sinai.For a Christian there is nothing peculiarly difficult about Christmas in a prison cell. I daresay it will have more meaning and will be observed with greater sincerity here in this prison than in places where all that survives of the feast is its name. That misery, suffering, povery, loneliness, helplessness, and guilt look very different to the eyes of God from what they do to man, that God should come down to the very place which men usually abhor, that Christ was born in a stable because there was no room for him in the inn – these are things which a prisoner can understand better than anyone else. For him the Christmas story is glad tidings in a very real sense. And that faith gives him a part in the communion of saints, a fellowship transcending the bounds of time and space and reducing the months of confinement here to insignificance.
H/T Subversive Influence, which is an excellent descriptor for this kind of thing.---
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