The Birth of God in our Souls

Meister Eckhart

An ancient Christian teacher, Meister Eckhart used to talk about The birth of God in our souls… and it’s a phrase that has caught my attention recently.

Every Christmas we are both challenged and thrilled by the idea that God came among us, ‘birthed’ at Bethlehem.  The idea of incarnation means a lot to many of us; that God isn’t stoically remote and out of reach but alongside us, sharing life as well as offering it in all its fulness.

Combine Christmas with Pentecost and maybe the theological equation gives us the daily ‘birth’ of God in our lives and living, through the presence of the Holy Spirit.

We ‘experience’ that ‘birth’ amongst us in bread and wine, prayer and service and without it faith fossilises into dull, dry religion.

Sometimes we might think the goal of faith is us entering into the life of God, into a serene heavenly state.  I’m not sure, because maybe it’s best thought of the other way round; that God enters into our life and is born in us day by day transforming ‘ordinary’ life. 

Such an understanding sees God present in a pandemic and sharing the pain of the stabbings at Reading; not separate from us but present in every act of love, courage and hope that defines us when the chips are down.

Meister Eckhart, the German Monk, who coined the phrase about the Birth of God in us, lived 700 years ago – yet that idea, of God sharing our experience and entering into our existence day by day, no matter what is going on around us, is as relevant in the 21^st century as it ever was in the 14^th.

May you, today, know the blessing and peace of God in all you do.

Ian