If we were pressed to think of one word to sum up the entire Christian story, one word that best defines the God of the Bible as seen through the central figure of Jesus, it would be difficult to think of a better word than generous. That's what bursts through the narrative from the very beginning to end. But is it really true? Can we really trust that God is generous? Do we dare imagine a future - a future Jesus seemed to envision - in which we might learn to be generous with one another?
Those kinds of questions are asked by the writers of the Bible itself, because they too lived in a world where generosity felt more than a little off the radar. But the story we read at Christmas, of Jesus' birth and infancy, is about what’s creeping onto the radar. That strange sense that something, slowly but surely, is shifting.