Thoughts on Christmas and the New Year
By Anne Perry

We have just had our last regular Sunday programme for this year, because next Sunday will be Christmas Day.  It does not seem like a full year since last Christmas, but obviously it must be.  Time has rather escaped me.  Am I the only one, or do lots of people feel that it must have passed when they were looking the other way?

So I apologize because I am late with my letter, and it is Sunday evening.  I have been traveling a lot lately — been home only in fits and starts, changing suitcases, doing laundry and catching up with letters and bills.  Now I have a few weeks at home — in my own bed — lovely thought.  However I do like meeting people, and there is always the chance that the next stop could offer something wonderful.

Will next year offer us wonderful things?  Yes, the best of all, the chance to try again, do better.  Christmas itself offers us the chance to come back from anywhere, to which we may have wandered, and return to the pathway upwards towards the light.  Because Christ came, lived, faced Gethsemane and died, there is forgiveness.  There is no hell so deep or so far away, no sin, if repented of, that cannot be washed away.  That is the greatest gift that can exist, and it is God’s gift to us, his children.

The New Year offers us more time in which to try harder to attain more wisdom, exercise more courage, be kinder, more patient, more honourable to fight harder for what needs our support, our help, our strength, and to forgive old wounds, and be forgiven.  Is that not also one of the sweetest of gifts?  Time is infinitely precious.  One of my resolutions with myself is to value it more, use it with more gratitude and make ALL of it count.

Recently I was watching a story on television in which a young mother was prepared to risk death by torture in order to save her child.  (And she did die!)  It was totally believable.  Would we not risk everything to save those we love, and who are vulnerable and dependent upon us, who are part of our lives and our hearts?

How much greater than our love is God’s love?  And He is our Father — not our creator who made us, but our Father who begot us!  There is a vast difference, which many in the world, because of their faiths, see differently from the way we do.  But if God is the ultimate Father, and we are even dearer to Him than those we love and cherish are to us, then what would he not do to give us the very best, the sweetest and most beautiful that we long for — IF we will strive to make ourselves ABLE to receive it?  Not fit to — we can never fully be that — but able.  There is no point in giving us what we CANNOT hold onto, what we will not open our hands to receive, or hallow and refine our hearts and our minds to treasure, and value truly so that we may keep it through all eternity.

I pray this Christmas and New Year that we will labour to refine our souls to be strong and gentle, generous and brave, and have faith in the Father who would teach us how to behave like Him, so we may have joy which can never fade or slip away from us, never take for granted that which is marvelous or cease to see the glory in it.

Wishing you an understanding of happiness now, and a greater and greater light for ever.

Happy Christmas, and faith and strength of heart in 2006.