Wishing All Readers a Blessed Christmas and a Hope-filled 2014

Feel good or factual?  This has been my dilemma over the past week or so as I've prepared for this morning's worship.  In the end I think, hope, pray, I have found a middle way that will carry honest hope into a weary world.

For so many this will be a difficult Christmas - floods and power cuts; sickness, bereavement and tragedy; poverty and debt... the list grows and grows, both in the braodcast news and in our private spheres.

So, I sit safe and warm in my third floor flat, power supply secure, breakfasted, parcels unwrapped and count my blessings...

Then, soon, I will head churchwards to celebrate the birth of Christ, the baby who bore hope into the world and, as a man, would bear despair out of it.  We will sip coffee and nibble treats round the table beautifully set in readiness for our annual Community Lunch, to which people of all types and conditions will be drawn (and, if true to form, some surprise and surprising guests).  And after the festive feast, I will slip on my clerical collar and head to the nearest hospital to see a couple of folk spending the holiday season there.  It all meets and muddles or melds - that's the reality I strive to express.

Whatever you day brings, whatever the circumstances in which you spend it, may you be blessed with moments of unbridalled joy and renewed hope for whatever the future holds.

BC:AD

by U A Fanthorpe

This was the moment when Before
Turned into After, and the future’s
Uninvented timekeepers presented arms.

This was the moment when nothing
Happened. Only dull peace
Sprawled boringly over the earth.

This was the moment when even energetic Romans
Could find nothing better to do
Than counting heads in remote provinces.
And this was the moment

When a few farm workers and three
Members of an obscure Persian sect
Walked haphazard by starlight straight
Into the kingdom of heaven.