Henry Ossawa Tanner painted many beautiful, powerful, religious images and I especially like his nocturnes, and those using a minimal palette which are his twilight and hazy paintings he made of the holy family on their journey. One in that genre I've always loved and found inspirational is called Abraham's Oak. This little oil painting of mine must be an unconscious homage and connection to that image, I later realized.

We are about to enter the season when we hear of the remarkable birth of Jesus. Though we know there were other births like that of Samuel's, the story of Abraham and Sarah, in their old age, stands out as they are both long past the time for that sort of thing to have happened. Yet the story we tell about Jesus depends on that earlier story of Isaac's birth, which is a birth not to a virgin or young woman but maybe even more incredible, to an old woman, after menopause! Yikes! 

Somewhere there was an ancient oak standing near a road, and it once sheltered Abraham and Sarah and then sojourners (angels -messengers of God) 

and even the LORD. By the shade of trees people found relief from the heat of the day but  then also heard news, and some pretty laughable news --such as an old woman conceiving! Without that story we don't get to the one about a young woman being with child that was from the Holy Spirit, which wasnlt something that prompted Mary to laugh about. Matthew and Luke provide genealogies in case we don't make the connection. Without one miraculous "begat", where would we be? 

I'm not sure where this particular scene is, as I made it up, but I know where it could be and why it comes early for our meditation, because we are on our journey, and maybe, --yet again, traveling over the well worn road of the Christmas story, there is still hope for us if we stop and linger, entertain strangers, prepare a feast, open our eyes and ears to what the pregnant season affords us. Then a shady tree might be one of our favorite stops on the way to the manger and a divine conception for us.

Pastor Jack