I\u2019ve had cause to reflect since that anything in life that has true beauty, and all in life that has true meaning, is vulnerable.
\nVulnerable to rejection, abuse and distortion. Or disaster. Because risk, fragility and vulnerability are, it seems, in the very nature of life.
\nAnd yet the paradox is that vulnerable, fragile love can be awesomely powerful and transformative.
\nThe only power on earth that can transform an enemy into friend, said Martin Luther King, is love.
\nNelson Mandela understood that truth too \u201d\u201c and by that truth he transformed South Africa.
\nThe Christmas story, of course, tells us the extraordinary truth about the redemptive power of fragile love.
\nThe shepherds and the three wise men are told that Immanuel \u201d\u201c God with us \u201d\u201c is to be found among the squalor and smell of a stable, in an inconsequential country on the troublesome edge of a vast empire.<\/p>\n