Christmas Blessings

Its always a great privelege to light the Christmas candle and share Christmas greetings with a congregation at the Watchnight service. This year, in a new place, with a new people, that sense of privelege was not diminished. Although its only been a few months, the intensity of joys and sorrows shared have forged links and created bonds that can be replicated in few other relationships. All through advent as we prepared to welcome the Christ child, that sense of  building hope and expectation has been to the fore. In many ways, today's world is not so different from the world into which Mary brought her child. Still folk want and need to believe that change is a possibility and that there really is more to life than the bleak picture painted by world economic recession. The birth of a child in such bizarre circumstances in a Bethlehem stable seemed an unlikely antidote to the oppression facing people then. Perhaps it seems just as unlikely today. But the longing for love and light and hope is not diminished. And so the Christ child is welcomed again. And we go on perpetuating the notion of change for the better.