Rose and gently pottered, doing a little preparation for something I have finally to sit down and write tomorrow afternoon. Took Mix for a walk and then started sorting Presbytery papers in preparation for my new job starting on January 1st. In reality you can see that I spent today pottering – and very pleasant it was too. But it was the pottering of one who would normally have been busy on a Christmas Eve and who now is just a little bit as a loose end!
Tom came along to visit and we sat over a coffee and put the world to rights. Late in the afternoon I had a shower (having already washed most of my clothes) and then we all ate in the farmhouse, joined by Jeffrey and Devon who have arrived for Christmas.
Soon it will be time to drive along to Gavinton for the watch night service, followed by a bit of supper after the service and then the drive home in the early hours of Christmas. It is cold but fair – a lovely Christmas Eve.
I’ve found myself thinking about Christmas (as I do every year) but this year in a different kind of a way because I don’t have to share my thoughts with other people. I think were I to be preaching this year I would concentrate on the Emmanuel name of Jesus with its meaning ‘God is with us’. I suspect that looking around the world and the mess it seems to be in, the idea of us journeying through life ‘with God with us’ must seem like a strange concept. But many have discovered when they are in the depth of the worst that the world can throw at them that it is the experience of God with them that has enabled them to come through their nightmare. Similarly it is the understanding that God is with us that has encouraged many of the saints through the ages to take on the huge powers of injustice and evil and has enabled them to change the world for the better.
God is with us – having chosen to be born into the world powerless and penniless in the person of a tiny child, a refugee in an occupied state. There is hope for us yet.
May you have a very Happy Christmas!
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