Plodding on.....

I seem incapable of walking through fresh, undisturbed snow, without singing ‘Good King Wenceslas’, to myself, especially that part about:

“In his master’s steps he trod, where the snow lay dinted.

Heat was in the very sod, which the saint had printed”.

(Of course, as a child, I though it very funny to substitute ‘little’ for ‘very’!)

The story in that Christmas carol is a heart-warming, if not a feet-warming one. The King looks out of his window on St. Stephen’s Day, -Boxing Day to you and me. He sees a poor man, struggling to collect dry twigs to burn, to keep warm. His pity becomes compassion, as he does something about the man’s need. With no facility to Google the information, he is reduced to asking his servant boy if he knows who the poor man is, and where he lives. Then, equipped with the relevant information, food, drink and fuel, they set off to find the man’s house and offer their gifts.

            The generosity of the King is matched by his enthusiasm and the size of his feet; but the poor lad who had been dragooned into helping is smaller, colder and more frightened. When he expresses his discomfort, the King encourages him and tells him to walk in his foot-prints, rather than struggle to wade through the deep snow. And the added miracle of the story is that the ground underneath those foot-prints actually becomes hot and warms the child’s feet.

            It’s a tale of good works and their reward: of blessings to the poor being a priority.

            This last week, we have been up to our calves, (and our maximum patience levels), in snow. We have also, as a church been focusing on praying, and in the coming weeks our extended teaching will be concerned with prayer, too. Prayer is not an easy subject to study, nor an easy habit to maintain, always, -and that’s me speaking personally. We Christians try to follow in Jesus’ footsteps, and he was a man of great prayer, but sometimes his footprints are difficult to step into and his stride seems beyond mine. But it’s only through that practice of prayer that Jesus, and we, manage to get those ‘good works’ done. Blessing the poor is still a priority, but it’s nothing to do with being patronising, or giving our cast-offs to the less fortunate. It’s about realising our own poverty, about sharing from our wealth, about holding the poor in high respect. And those attitudes come through the relationship we have with God, the relationship nurtured by walking in his foot-steps in prayer.

            That’s what I’m holding onto, anyway, in these coming weeks: a mental image of prayer being an invitation to walk close behind Jesus, in his steps, even though his stride is bigger and the storm a bit overwhelming. But it’s certainly better than trying to wade through life on our own, making our own marks, and tending to go under.

            And, hopefully, a small miracle of Christ’s fire of love might just warm our feet as we go.

 

You might like to use this prayer: