We have journeyed through Advent together. We have remembered the pregnant waiting of Christmas and the hope still to come of Peace on Earth but we are still waiting, still full of hope.
We wait with the poor, with the homeless, the refugees throughout the world and we know that Christ often comes to us in the face of the poor, the vulnerable, the marginalised.
So we light a candle for all who wait for God's coming.
We hear of the struggle of ordinary people to identify with a God of darkness and of light just as s/he is the God of black and white, male and female, gay and straight and of the vulnerable down the centuries.
We have heared again the cry of John the Baptist, and the call to justice which cost him his life as it does others throughout the world today.
And we have reflected on the choice of God to use a young teenage single mum as the vehicle for the divine plan and Mary's response as she realised the implication of the prophetic mandate realized in her womb.
And so today we remember through the symbol of presents the gift of Christ to the world.
And the focus of this journey centres on a baby and as so often they do, that baby becomes a vehicle of hope.
So the story of Christmas is that hope is brought into being, a hope which grounds itself in love. So that the suffering are comforted, and those who thinks that life is not worth living experience love and finds a reason for living.
And so Christ is not born today in a stable but as a small light in us, a light which gives us hope and gives hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved, a light that will never go out because it has an eternal fuel.
A rumour of angels
