Throughout Advent we have been reflecting on the themes of hope, peace, joy and love. They are all the wonderful gifts we are each given at Christmas. God enters our time and space, our bodies, lives and our reality and dwells with us in order to give us these gifts.
We are each one of us the beloved of God.
In Charles Dickens classic, ‘A Christmas Carol’, the character Scrooge is taken on a journey which allows him to see his life through a different lens, in the end although nothing in the world or in Scrooge’s life has actually changed, everything is different. It’s because Scrooge is different and what has changed is how he sees the people and the world around him and even how he sees himself.
This is the gift we receive from Jesus at Christmas, the world around us is still filled with violence, our lives are affected by sickness and death but how we react to the world, how we see it through the lens of Christmas changes everything. Christ coming to us shows us in technicolour beauty and angelic singing that God loves is, is with us through all that happens to us, never has and never will abandon us and that is what our hope is founded on. This is how we can access peace in the midst of turmoil, how we can experience joy even at times of sadness.
We are each one of us the beloved of God. Amen.