大象传媒

Good morning. On this day, the twentieth of January, in nineteen fifty eight, two explorers and their teams, met on the Antarctic:
New Zealander Edmund Hilary and Englishman Vivien Fuchs.
Eventually Vivien Fuchs and his team, accompanied by Hilary, completed the first recorded overland crossing of Antarctica.
These are only two of the explorers that history remembers, on only one of the continents.
What draws us to explore wild places?
People seem to always have been drawn to explore what lies over a horizon, or to cross a stretch of water to an island hitherto unknown to us.
Even the skies have not been entirely unexplored, with space exploration, landing on the moon and machines that go to Mars to look for us.
There鈥檚 an adage in writing that there are only two stories: 鈥淎 person went on a journey, and a stranger came to town.鈥�
The history of human exploration has often shown that both of these are true because where explorers went, people often were already there. So the person who went on a journey became the stranger who came to town, with all kinds of consequences.
I like to think of the story of Jesus of Nazareth in light of this literary adage. As God in person, he went on a journey into the skin and bones of humanity. And he is the stranger, come to town, with a message.
God of the town
and God of the stranger.
Help us in our explorations
to expand our curiosity
and respect what we see.
Because you have always
gone before us
and been there
ahead of us.
Amen.