Many of us will be feeling the strangeness of this Christmas where, after two years of being relatively protected during this pandemic, we are going to be exposed to widespread transmission in the community. We perhaps need to hear the message of Christmas more than ever this year; a message not about fun and family celebrations but about light and hope in even the darkest of times. The stories of the nativity remind us that God is with us, through it all.
The opening stanza of Christina Rossetti’s poem Christmas Eve reads;
Christmas hath a darkness
Brighter than the blazing noon,
Christmas hath a chillness
Warmer than the heat of June,
Christmas hath a beauty
Lovelier than the world can show:
For Christmas bringeth Jesus,
Brought for us so low.
Because Jesus is ‘brought so low’ we can know that God is not absent from any of our experiences that can bring us low.
This is the hope of Christmas: that the God who would risk solidarity with us, enduring the same human frailty and vulnerability, is the same one whose love holds the centre in a shifting universe.
Grace and peace,
Sue+