By Rev. Nancy Brunt
Holy Trinity Anglican Church, Kamsack
When it comes to Christmas, it isn’t just new and old but it is also a matter of good and bad. We need to be able to discern what to hold onto. Each Advent we are invited to reflect and bring Christ anew into our hearts– to become our best selves again and again through God’s Spirit working in and through us during the year.
Perhaps if we all just tried to be a little nicer to each other, then this world would be as good as it can be.
But then someone walks into a public place with guns and bombs and rocks our world. It’s in those moments that we know that everything isn’t okay in the world.
We know that darkness is still present. And we’re left wondering how these things happen in the world even after Jesus, the Prince of Peace, entered it at Christmas. Then the backlash rises against refugees as fear rules our lives. It is then that we need to remember that after our Lord’s birth all was not well even then.
“Then Joseph got up, took the child and his mother by night, and went to Egypt.” – Matthew 2: 14
“…and the mother with her child is driven into foreign lands.”
“Comfort, O comfort my people, says your God. --Isaiah 40
Comfort, tenderness - these are words that are surely close to the deepest
longing of our hearts, particularly when we are feeling exhausted and broken by the hardships of life. They were first spoken almost 2,500 years ago to a broken people, defeated in a brutal war, the survivors scattered as refugees in foreign lands. Comfort, in the Christian sense, is significantly different from the comfort that the world has to offer. Yet in Jesus Christ know that with Him the great Comfort-in-person appeared, to feed His flock like a shepherd and gather the lambs in His arms, and gently to lead the mother sheep.
It was at creation that Jesus gave light and life to all people, for even at that time, He was the light of the world. And in the beginning, the world was full of life, it was full of light. But humans have continued to separate themselves from the light of God. We have exchanged our relationship with God for relationships with idols, we have not been good stewards of creation, and we have not loved those around us. We have chosen to separate ourselves from the light God gave us, and instead live in darkness.
In this Christmas season I urge each and everyone to search for the light of peace and love, to feel the love of God in your life as we celebrate the birth of the “Prince of Peace” Jesus the Messiah.
Blessing to one and all.
