{"product_id":"miracle-on-10th-street-isbn-9781524759322","title":"Miracle on 10th Street","description":"\u003cb\u003eCelebrate the season with this beautiful and inspiring collection of thoughtful reflections on Christmas from the bestselling author of \u003ci\u003eA Wrinkle in Time\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e \u003cb\u003e \u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e For more than seventy years, Madeleine L’Engle’s writing have delighted and inspired readers. In her stories, essays, poems, journal entries, and letters, she returned again and again to the beauty of Christmas, illuminating the holiday with her singular insight and imagination. \u003ci\u003eMiracle on 10th Street \u003c\/i\u003eincludes excerpts from her most cherished works, reflecting on Advent, Incarnation, Epiphany, mystery, and redemption. In these pages, L’Engle points to the marvels and curiosities that fill everyday life. And, as always, she shows herself to be a one-woman force for celebration—fully believing that delight and wonder must mark the life of anyone who sees God’s love at work.“Madeleine L’Engle captures the spiritual heart of Christmas—an invitation to gaze into the miraculous presence of God in and with and through the world.”\u003cb\u003e—Diana Butler Bass, from the Foreword\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cb\u003eMadeleine L’Engle\u003c\/b\u003e was the author of more than fifty books for all ages, including \u003ci\u003eA Wrinkle in Time\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003eA Swiftly Tilting Planet\u003c\/i\u003e. Other popular L’Engle books include \u003ci\u003eWalking on Water, The Rock That Is Higher,\u003c\/i\u003e and \u003ci\u003ePenguins and Golden Calves\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cb\u003eAdvent\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAdvent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man.\u003cbr\u003e—from “Redeeming All Brokenness”\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eO Oriens\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, O come Emmanuel\u003cbr\u003ewithin this fragile vessel here to dwell.\u003cbr\u003eO Child conceived by heaven’s power\u003cbr\u003egive me thy strength: it is the hour.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, thou Wisdom from on high;\u003cbr\u003elike any babe at life you cry;\u003cbr\u003efor me, like any mother, birth\u003cbr\u003ewas hard, O light of earth.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, O come, thou Lord of might,\u003cbr\u003ewhose birth came hastily at night,\u003cbr\u003eborn in a stable, in blood and pain\u003cbr\u003eis this the king who comes to reign?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, thou Rod of Jesse’s stem,\u003cbr\u003ethe stars will be thy diadem.\u003cbr\u003eHow can the infinite finite be?\u003cbr\u003eWhy choose, child, to be born of me?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, thou key of David, come,\u003cbr\u003eopen the door to my heart-home.\u003cbr\u003eI cannot love thee as a king—\u003cbr\u003eso fragile and so small a thing.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, thou Day-spring from on high:\u003cbr\u003eI saw the signs that marked the sky.\u003cbr\u003eI heard the beat of angels’ wings\u003cbr\u003eI saw the shepherds and the kings.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO come, Desire of nations, be\u003cbr\u003esimply a human child to me.\u003cbr\u003eLet me not weep that you are born.\u003cbr\u003eThe night is gone. Now gleams the morn.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eRejoice, rejoice, Emmanuel,\u003cbr\u003eGod’s Son, God’s Self, with us to dwell.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eRedeeming All Brokenness\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eAs we move into Advent we are called to listen, something we seldom take time to do in this frenetic world of over-activity. But waiting for birth, waiting for death—these are listening times, when the normal distractions of life have lost their power to take us away from God’s call to center in Christ.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDuring Advent we are traditionally called to contemplate death, judgment, hell, and heaven. To give birth to a baby is also a kind of death—death to the incredible intimacy of carrying a child, death to old ways of life and birth into new—and it is as strange for the parents as for the baby. Judgment: John of the Cross says that in the evening of life we shall be judged on love; not on our accomplishments, not on our successes and failures in the worldly sense, but solely on love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOnce again, as happened during the past nearly two thousand years, predictions are being made of the time of this Second Coming, which, Jesus emphasized, “even the angels in heaven do not know.” But we human creatures, who are “a little lower than the angels,” too frequently try to set ourselves above them with our predictions and our arrogant assumption of knowledge which God hid even from the angels. Advent is not a time to declare, but to listen, to listen to whatever God may want to tell us through the singing of the stars, the quickening of a baby, the gallantry of a dying man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eListen. Quietly. Humbly. Without arrogance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the first verse of Jesu, Joy of Man’s Desiring, we sing, “Word of God, our flesh that fashioned with the fire of life impassioned,” and the marvelous mystery of incarnation shines. “Because in the mystery of the Word made flesh,” goes one of my favorite propers, for it is indeed the mystery by which we live, give birth, watch death.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen the Second Person of the Trinity entered the virgin’s womb and prepared to be born as a human baby (a particular baby, Jesus of Nazareth), his death was inevitable.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIt is only after we have been enabled to say, “Be it unto me according to your Word,” that we can accept the paradoxes of Christianity. Christ comes to live with us, bringing an incredible promise of God’s love, but never are we promised that there will be no pain, no suffering, no death, but rather that these very griefs are the road to love and eternal life.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn Advent we prepare for the coming of all Love, that love which will redeem all the brokenness, wrongness, hardnesses of heart which have afflicted us.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eBorn once\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBorn once.\u003cbr\u003eThat’s enough.\u003cbr\u003eJesus was born once,\u003cbr\u003efor us.\u003cbr\u003eThat’s enough. That’s love.\u003cbr\u003eLove is once for all\u003cbr\u003efor all of us.\u003cbr\u003eJesus will come\u003cbr\u003eHe who was once born.\u003cbr\u003eHe will come when he will\u003cbr\u003eLove is once for all\u003cbr\u003eFor all. That’s enough.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLife—A Gift\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThese are very special weeks, these weeks before Christmas, weeks of quiet waiting, weeks of remembering forty years of Christmasses with Hugh, or earlier Christmasses with my parents, weeks of affirmation that life is a gift and that what we have had we will always have, and that despite the “change and decay in all around we see” we do have a part to play in the future.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eTime and Space Turned Upside Down\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAvent\u003c\/i\u003e. That time of waiting, waiting even more trembling and terrible than the waiting between Good Friday and Easter Sunday.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut what are we waiting for? Why? We’re not waiting, as we so often are taught as children, for Christmas, for the baby Jesus to be born in a stable in Bethlehem. We’re waiting for something that has not happened yet, that has never happened before, something totally new. We know only what the end of this waiting has been called throughout the centuries: The Second Coming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhat is it, the coming of Christ in glory? The return of Christ to the earth? What’s it going to be like? We don’t know. We don’t know anything about this event that is new, that has never before happened.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut, being human and therefore curious, we want to know. We want to know so badly that sometimes we think we do know, and that can sometimes lead to danger and even evil. Whenever we want to know something before its true time, we get into trouble. We’ve never learned how to wait. We’re impatient creatures. Our impatience, our unwillingness to wait, is all through our stories, from Adam and Eve on.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe only thing I know about the Second Coming is that it is going to happen because of God’s love. God made the universe out of love; the Word shouted all things joyfully into being because of love. The Second Coming, whenever it happens and whatever it means, will also be because of love.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e--\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWe express what we believe in icons, which are creative, or idols, which are destructive. But what is a constructive icon?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIcons break time and space. One of my favorite icons is Reblev’s famous picture of the Trinity, the three heavenly angels who came to visit Abraham and Sarah sitting at a table in front of the tent. On the table is the meal that has been prepared for the heavenly visitors, and what is this meal? We look at the table and see chalice and paten, the bread and the wine. Time and space turned upside down. Here, three thousand years before the birth of Christ, is the Trinity, Father, Son, and Holy Spirit; here, three thousand years before Jesus came into time for us, is the body and the blood.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo what could be an icon of the Second Coming? I think of Creation itself, and how little the astrophysicists know about it. It does seem that there was, indeed, a moment of Creation, when something, so subatomically tiny as to be almost nothing at all, suddenly opened up to become everything. How long did it take? There wasn’t any time before the beginning. Time began with the beginning. Time will end at the ending, at the Second Coming.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eOn a rare, clear night I look at the stars. According to present knowledge, all the stars are rushing away from each other at speeds impossible for us to conceive. Are they going to keep on, getting further and further away, more and more separate? Or is there going to be a point at which the procedure is reversed, and they start coming together again? Nobody knows.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe metaphor that has come to me is birth. Our ordinary (oh, no, they’re not ordinary at all—they’re extraordinary) human births. Right now I am like the unborn baby in the womb, knowing nothing except the comforting warmth of the amniotic fluid in which I swim, the comforting nourishment entering my body from a source I cannot see or understand. My whole being comes from an unseen, unknown nurturer. By that nurturer I am totally loved and protected, and that love is forever. It does not end when I am precipitated out of the safe waters of the womb into the unsafe world. It will not end when I breathe my last, mortal breath. That love manifested itself joyously in the creation of the universe, became particular for us in Jesus, and will show itself most gloriously in the Second Coming. We need not fear.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere are many tough questions for which we have no finite, cut-and-dried answers. Even Jesus did not answer all our questions! But he came, because of that love which casts out fear. He came, and he will come again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEven so, come Lord Jesus!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eComing, ready or not!\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eLuke 14:32\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing, ready or not!\u003cbr\u003eThe children freeze in their hiding places\u003cbr\u003ewaiting to be found.\u003cbr\u003eThey are ready.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eWhen the time for the banquet came, \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ehe sent his servant to say \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eto those who had been invited,\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing, ready or not!\u003cbr\u003eThe old woman in the nursing home\u003cbr\u003emumbles what she can remember\u003cbr\u003eof old prayers \u0026amp; hymns.\u003cbr\u003eShe is ready.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003e“Come along; everything is ready now.” \u003cbr\u003eBut all alike started to make excuses.\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing, ready or not!\u003cbr\u003eThe executive planning a meeting\u003cbr\u003eshouting for lists \u0026amp; faxes\u003cbr\u003eisn’t ready to be ready\u003cbr\u003enot yet.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe first said, “I have bought a \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003epiece of land and must go and \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003esee it. Please accept my apologies.”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing, ready or not!\u003cbr\u003eAm I ready to be ready?\u003cbr\u003eCan I put it all down\u003cbr\u003eall the burdens\u003cbr\u003eall the needs of love\u003cbr\u003eis getting ready to be ready\u003cbr\u003eready enough?\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eYet another said, “I have just got \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003emarried and so am unable to come.”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eAnother said, “I have bought five \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003eyoke of oxen and am on my way to try \u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003ci\u003ethem out. Please accept my apologies.”\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eComing, ready or not?\u003cbr\u003eDrop it all. Let it go.\u003cbr\u003eLet’s go!\u003cbr\u003eReady!\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAdvent, 1971\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWhen will he come\u003cbr\u003eand how will he come\u003cbr\u003eand will there be warnings\u003cbr\u003eand will there be thunders\u003cbr\u003eand rumbles of armies\u003cbr\u003ecoming before him\u003cbr\u003eand banners and trumpets\u003cbr\u003eWhen will he come\u003cbr\u003eand how will he come\u003cbr\u003eand will we be ready\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eO woe to you people\u003cbr\u003eyou sleep through the thunder\u003cbr\u003eyou heed not the warnings\u003cbr\u003ethe fires and the drownings\u003cbr\u003ethe earthquakes and stormings\u003cbr\u003eand ignorant armies\u003cbr\u003eand dark closing on you\u003cbr\u003ethe song birds are falling\u003cbr\u003ethe sea birds are dying\u003cbr\u003eno fish now are leaping\u003cbr\u003ethe children are choking\u003cbr\u003ein air not for breathing\u003cbr\u003ethe aged are gasping\u003cbr\u003ewith no one to tend them\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003ea bright star has blazed forth\u003cbr\u003eand no one has seen it\u003cbr\u003eand no one has wakened\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eForever’s Start\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe days are growing noticeably shorter; the nights are longer, deeper, colder. Today the sun did not rise as high in the sky as it did yesterday. Tomorrow it will be still lower. At the winter solstice the sun will go below the horizon, below the dark. The sun does die. And then, to our amazement, the Son will rise again.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome, Lord Jesus, quickly come\u003cbr\u003eIn your fearful innocence.\u003cbr\u003eWe fumble in the far-spent night\u003cbr\u003eFar from lovers, friends, and home:\u003cbr\u003eCome in your naked, newborn might.\u003cbr\u003eCome, Lord Jesus, quickly come;\u003cbr\u003eMy heart withers in your absence.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome, Lord Jesus, small, enfleshed\u003cbr\u003eLike any human, helpless child.\u003cbr\u003eCome once, come once again, come soon:\u003cbr\u003eThe stars in heaven fall, unmeshed:\u003cbr\u003eThe sun is dark, blood’s on the moon.\u003cbr\u003eCome, Word who came to us enfleshed,\u003cbr\u003eCome speak in joy untamed and wild.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome, thou wholly other, come,\u003cbr\u003eSpoken before words began,\u003cbr\u003eCome and judge your uttered world\u003cbr\u003eWhere you made our flesh your home.\u003cbr\u003eCome, with bolts of lightning hurled,\u003cbr\u003eCome, thou wholly other, come,\u003cbr\u003eWho came to man by being man.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eCome, Lord Jesus, at the end,\u003cbr\u003eTime’s end, my end, forever’s start.\u003cbr\u003eCome in your flaming, burning power.\u003cbr\u003eTime, like the temple veil, now rend;\u003cbr\u003eCome, shatter every human hour.\u003cbr\u003eCome, Lord Jesus, at the end.\u003cbr\u003eBreak, then mend the waiting heart.Reader's Guide Inside","brand":"Convergent Books","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":46300327248101,"sku":"NP9781524759322","price":16.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":false}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/1842\/7735\/files\/9781524759322.jpg?v=1767732767","url":"https:\/\/k12savings.com\/es\/products\/miracle-on-10th-street-isbn-9781524759322","provider":"K12savings","version":"1.0","type":"link"}