Time to share joy, peace and love with one another

MANY of you, like me, will have been to Nativity plays and carol services in the last week or so, that tell again the wonderful story of the first Christmas all those years ago.

One of my favourite elements in the Nativity story is the shepherds, out on the hillside, who were the first people whom the angels appeared to, to declare the good news of what God was doing in that stable in Bethlehem — that he had sent his Son, Jesus, as a baby born to be the saviour of the world.

At the heart of the angels’ message to the shepherds was their declaration that God would send his “peace on earth”, and “goodwill to all people”.

Tragically, in many parts of the world ever since that first Christmas, people have all too rarely known peace and today, in that very part of the world where the angels appeared to the shepherds — in Israel, Gaza and Palestine — there is fighting, warfare and destruction, and, not only there but in far too many other countries, such as Ukraine, Russia and Sudan, where fighting, war and enmity between people seems to endure far more than the peace and goodwill that the angels promised.

So, what are we to make then of the angels’ promise of peace, when for so many people in our world the daily reality is anything but peace and goodwill? The angels’ song to the shepherds declares to us that God’s vision is for peace, and God’s desire is for peace.

But that peace is something that needs positive action to be taken in order to turn it into reality — the action that first Christmas-time was God stepping into the world in the baby born in the stable. And, in the same way, peace requires action in our day by each one of us committing to be agents of peace, workers for peace, in our relationships, our homes, our workplaces, our communities, our nation and our world.

We are not shepherds out on a hillside, but the good news of God’s coming into the world at Christmas-time is proclaimed to us through Nativity plays, Christmas carols, and — perhaps above all — through the love, the joy and the peace we can share with one another.

In what is one of my all-time favourite Christmas carols, In the Bleak Midwinter, by Christina Rossetti, the final verse is a reflection on the wonderful gift that God was giving the world in sending his Son that first Christmas-time, and on our response,

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring Him a lamb.

If I were a wise man, I would do my part.

Yet what I can, I give Him, give my heart.

So, may you know the peace of God in your heart this Christmas-time and may that peace flow actively from you to touch and bless the people around you — your family, your friends and your colleagues.

And may we work, give and pray so that same peace would indeed spread across the world, and transform, protect and bless the nations, and the people of those nations, that are held in the grip of hostility, enmity and war.

Just as the peace that came to the world that first Christmas started with the action of God, then so too, in our day, may peace come into our world through the action — and the love for one another — of each one of us.

May you have a blessed, joy-filled and truly Happy Christmas.

Rt Rev Gavin Collins
Bishop of Dorchester