When I lived in Dibley I had a dear member of my church who around this time every year would observe, "oh, you've got your Christmas cold.  Ministers always seem to get colds at Christmas."  Yes, I do have my Christmas cold (or what my family would more likely term my birthday cold, since as often as not it begins on or around my birthday) and yes, it is something ministers (and school teachers) are prone to.

There's something about this time of year when outdoors is usually wet and cold(ish) and indoors warm and bug-breeding; when shops and buses and trains are full of sniffing, sneezing, coughing people, and the activity level nears its peak.  Just one more service to prepare now (Christmas Day morning) and everything else laid out on my desk in readiness.  Just one more carol service, one more carol sing, more more child-centred service and then Christmas Day...

Today has been one of those days when it's never really got light - rain and more rain, and now the night wraps its tendrils around the outside of the Gathering Place and the yellow glow of the light in the vestry illumines my endeavours at crafting words for a waiting world.

Rhino-viruses and cold, dark, wet days conspire against merriment, and yet we persist.  Why?  It's something about hope and love and the light that cannot be overcome...

God who spoke light into existence

In this season of dark, damp, dankness

You are a ray of inextinguishable hope

God who spoke life into existence

In this season of coughs, colds and catarrh

You are the touch of indefinable healing

God whose word was en-fleshed in a human being

In this season of merriment, mayhem and madness

You are the whisper of incomprehensible peace