Five Gold Rings | James Henley

Dec200929

Reflection & Contemplation, Twelve Days of Christmas

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Five Gold Rings

On the fifth day of Christmas,
my true love sent to me
Five gold rings,
Four calling birds,
Three French hens,
Two turtle doves,
And a partridge in a pear tree.

Continuing our series on the Twelve Days of Christmas, we’re looking at the different Christian symbols applied to the folksong. The idea behind these meanings is that then the song can be taught as a kind of teaching song to help learn and remember some important “pillars” of faith. Today is the five gold rings – which symbolise the first five books of the Bible, also called the Books of Moses, the Pentateuch or the Torah (Jewish scriptures).

The Torah is the most revered of the Jewish texts because it contains the Law, but also because it tells the key narrative about the forming of the people of Israel – the people of God.

One of the key themes of the Torah is this idea that God chooses and calls a group of people to follow him. The God of Israel forms a community around him, and invites them to live in a new, different, alternative way to the other nations around them. He invites a community to live in relationship with him. To recover something of what was lost from the garden of Eden by forming the very way they live their lives together around that relationship.

And in calling a nation to him, God also reveals something of himself to them – beginning a great adventure of discovery.

May you take courage from the story of a God who draws people into community around him – who calls us into a radical, alternative way of living and being.

You can catch up with the rest of this series on the Twelve Days of Christmas here.
[Photo Credit: santacrewsgirl]

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