14th December 2020

As I walked to work this week, it was, as it always is, early in the morning. The sun was slowly rising over the buildings and it was most quiet – very few people around, no traffic and very peaceful. In that stillness your mind wanders, and I could not help but reflect that we appear to have been waiting a lot this year.

Waiting for lockdown to end, waiting for a vaccine, waiting on BREXIT negotiations; waiting for normal life to return. With the waiting many of us are feeling anxious, stressed, and fearful. Uncertainty is all around us.

And then I remembered that we are in the season of Advent. A period of waiting but also a period of hope. And for a moment or two, relaxation and some of the stresses and strains that we are all experiencing eased for me.  With the coming of the birth of Jesus comes great hope, new birth, new life. Peace and love and support for all of us. The Christmas story gives us all a better future, the Christ child comes to make life better for all of us.

I looked up again and the sun was rising, the sky was red and the words of a Nina Simone song came into my mind…

“It’s a new dawn, it’s a new day, it’s a new life”… You know the rest.

John 3: 16

For God so loved the world, as to give his only begotten Son; that whosoever believeth in him, may not perish, but may have life everlasting.

Graham Lewis