A time of joy, light and traditions
TODAY, we join with Christians and friends across the country and around the world to celebrate the birth of Christ.
This time of the year, is full of joy, light, and traditions.
As a family, we usually get together to eat food, share laughs and stories, give each other gifts, and most importantly, spend quality time together.
This year, as we continue to deal with the impacts of the global COVID-19 pandemic, Christmas traditions will be different.
Some families aren’t getting together for those big dinners anymore, but we can, and should, give thanks for everything that has united us until today.
During Christmas season we are asked to hear the liberating good news from God.
“Mary gives birth to Jesus our Saviour, the overshadowing presence of God fully revealed in a precious child, and the God that loves us so much becomes one of us!”
And yet we all struggle with false images and representations of God. Too often they prevent us from seeing the real God at work in our lives.
It is easy to think Christmas, and easy to believe Christmas; but it is hard, intolerably hard to act Christmas.
Yes, intolerably hard for ourselves and others, by not properly appreciating the depths of our own faith. Too often, we substitute the wondrous and life-giving mystery of
God with something that diminishes us.
This Advent our vision of Christ needs to expand. Let’s especially remember God’s closeness to us and our responsibility to become peacemakers.
In this season of peace and goodwill we see our God reduced to the most vulnerable of creatures; another little boy caught up in homelessness, poverty and a cruel cycle of violence.
He gave up everything in order to become one with us. You cannot get closer than that! He comes to us, and stays with us, especially in times of difficulty and loneliness.
We might say that Christmas is the feast of ‘closeness’. It is the time when family and friends who are separated – by geography, by hurt or anger, or simply by the distances created by time – come together again to celebrate this joyous feast and to renew their bonds with one another and, we hope, with Christ.
Christmas reunions can be wonderful. They can also open old wounds and bring back painful memories. To make Christmas joyful we must be able to forgive one another and let go of past injuries that are real and imagined.
We humans often struggle mightily our whole lives to really accept this divine love that gives itself so totally.
But this is precisely the good news of our faith. Our God becomes a tiny infant, fragile yet divine.
May the Christ child bless you and your loved ones this Christmas, and give you His strength and peace in the New Year 2022. Blessings.
Christmas reunions can be wonderful. They can also open old wounds and bring back painful memories. To make Christmas joyful we must be able to forgive one another and let go of past injuries that are real and imagined
Rev. Orisi Vuki
Dean/Anglican church