22nd December 2017

I’ve lost count of the number of times at Christmas that I’ve sung the mathematical version of the famous carol, ‘Hark! The herald angels sing’. Proof-reading is a notoriously difficult discipline, but inevitably the angels turn into angles, and the spell-check can’t spot the difference between a cute cherub and an acute angle. But what if the angles could sing?

Maybe those that live in a triangular home of the equilateral kind, would lift a hymn to the Trinity, and herald the equality of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Maybe those that sit at the base of a triangle of the isosceles kind, would laud the twin natures of Christ, being fully God and fully man. Maybe those that occupy the corner of a triangle of the right-angle kind, would herald the news that we can be put right with God through faith in Jesus Christ.

The wise men from the east however were not mere clever mathematicians who came in search of the ultimate geometry, but spiritual seekers who travelled from afar to adore a Person whose life would be perfect to the n-th degree, and whose death would rescue us from the negative side of infinity. And the angels who attended his birth at Bethlehem, sang not the tunes of trigonometry, but the praises of One who was given to save:  “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men on whom his favour rests.” Merry Christmas!

DM 23^rd Dec 2017