letter

Dear Friends,

At Christmastime we are confronted by angels.

Talk about angels at any other time of year and people would be recommending that we seek treatment. Yes, we’re allowed to sing, “I believe in angels” with ABBA but that’s in the context of a song about a dream. And yes, we can celebrate the tinkling of the bell and Clarence getting his wings in ‘It’s a wonderful life’ every year – but that’s a film.

I guess that most people struggle to believe in angels. Angels are storybook characters or craft activities – all wings and halos and glitter – but they don’t exist. They’re not real. Of course they’re imaginary.

And yet Christmas time is different from every other time of the year. Christmas allows angels to enter our stories and our consciousness. Christmas enables us to welcome the messages that angels bring – because, let’s face it, who doesn’t want to receive a message of good news? Who doesn’t want there to be joy for – and peace in – the world? Who doesn’t want to celebrate when a child is born?

We continue to be surrounded by so many fearful messages. We hear so many loud, influential voices constantly telling us that we need to be very afraid. Yet again this year we’ve been drip fed the message that we need to fear “the other”, “the stranger”, “the immigrant”, the person who arrived on a small boat. We’ve been invited to blame them for all that’s wrong in our lives, country and world, even when we know – if we stop to think about it – that this can’t possibly be the case.

The problem with fear is that it’s often paralysing, and even if we understand it to be irrational, it can prevent us from welcoming and getting to know such people or even understanding them to be human beings, flesh and blood, just like us with feelings and emotions, hopes and dreams for the future, much like our own. If there’s a difference between us, it’s most likely that their lives have been many times more challenging than our own.

Angels invite us to suspend our cynicism and disbelief and open ourselves to the possibility that God might still have urgent messages to bring to us today. Perhaps the message we most need to hear is the one that the angels in the Christmas story are most associated with – “Do not be afraid.”

As we celebrate Jesus’ birth once again, the good news of great joy that we can hold onto is that we too have nothing to fear.

Whatever our concerns about our own lives, the lives of loved ones, our country or the world in general, whatever happens in it or to it, God is with us. That’s the message of Christmas and it is essentially the message of the angels.

Such knowledge should set us free to challenge those who’d keep us fearful. It should also inspire us to work for the kind of world that God loved into being and longs for still.

Wishing you and those whom you love a joyful and peaceful Christmastime.

Paul