pregnant waiting of Christmas and the hope still to come of Peace on
Earth.
We wait with the poor, with the homeless, the refugees.
So we light this candle for all those who wait for God's coming.
God is a God of darkness and of light.
We have heard 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 woman as the
vehicle for the divine plan.
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 child in the playground crying is
comforted, and the old lady who thinks that life is not worth living experiences
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 hope, hope to the hopeless and love to the unloved, a light that
will never go out because it has an eternal fuel.
Here is our call, our responsibility this Christmastide and all through the year.
God encourages us to face the powerful, to protect the vulnerable and the
needy. God challenges us to see his face in every stranger. The Prince of
Peace calls us to look away from the comfortable and to see the suffering and
terror in our world. Christmas is a time not just of looking in and being with our
families but also of looking out, seeking the family which has been left
outside,.
God comes to us in many ways, through prayer, through a dream, through
someone else, a word in time.
May this Christmas be a vehicle of hope for us all to feed our spirits and our
imaginations and to inspire us, with the angel’s message, to bring hope and
peace on earth.
And may the God of Hope, the God of Light be with you, and you will know it
by the peace in your hearts. And of such stuff are dreams made of and of
such stuff is the journey that as Christians we embark on when we decide to
truly follow the Light of All Lights.
This Christmas choose to follow the God of the baby born in Bethlehem.
