As I sit here and write my “Ramblings” for this double issue of the magazine, I am slightly shocked at how quickly the end of the year is approaching.  The years seem to fly by and we find ourselves at the end of 2022 turning our focus to our Christmas preparations and a little further forward to the New Year with all that might promise us.  

I think it is true to say that for many people, 2022 is not turning out to be the year of change for the better they had hoped.  Just when we were starting to lift ourselves out of the shadow of the Covid pandemic and life was looking like it would return to some semblance of normality we seem to have fallen into one financial crisis after another.  Prices are rising in the shops almost weekly, mortgages and rents are going up as is the cost of just about everything.  We have also lived through a period of unprecedented political upheaval – the like of which we have never seen.  The current situation, especially for our poorest becomes yet more difficult as they struggle to find the money to pay energy bills or feed children.    

It would be no surprise then, if our Christmas celebrations were a bit more austere this year, just a bit more muted.  But then, I think, the human spirit is such that even in the midst of the most difficult situations we can still find a sense of hope and kindle the desire to celebrate and make the very best of the hand that we have been dealt.  And I think that particularly at this time of the year the story of Jesus’ birth helps us and gives us inspiration.

There is so much in the nativity that speaks to us in the here and now and so gives us hope.  A couple travel for long days over difficult terrain to find a place to stay.  Turned away and rejected many times until a kindly innkeeper has pity on them.  This young single mother gives birth to a baby in the most unhygienic circumstances, in a strange place with none of her family around her for support.  Her child is born into a scene of poverty, sheltering with animals and laid in straw in a feeding trough to keep warm.  Those who are first to visit are poor themselves and members of society who are not thought well of – only capable of looking after sheep on the hillsides.  And while they recognise that this tiny child is a promised King and that this birth is significant, it is left to foreigners who have come from distant lands who recognise this and not his own people.

There is much in the Christmas message for those who feel on the margins of society, who are town-trodden or poor, frightened, cold, hungry, and much challenge for those of us who are better off and may have to consider the needs of others before our own. 

At its heart the Christmas story is one of hope – hope for all whether rich or poor, whoever we are and wherever we are from.  And my prayer this Christmas is that we may all feel that sense of hope in God helping us through these difficult times.  And I hope that the sense of rejoicing this celebration brings will carry us forward into the New Year with confidence and trust in God and in the future he has for us.