I have watched I think one episode of 'I am a celebrity...' Reality tv takes many forms these days but the thing that unites is the desire for the contestants to either be famous or revive their place in the public eye. How many of our young people, whether it is out of escapism or misguided career choices, just want to be famous. The enterprise, I nearly wrote industry, is self perpetuating - glossy mags, webcasts, tv interviews all designed to keep the profile up and perpetuate the fame game.
But that's just it, it feels like there is a real desire to be famous for famous sakes. Watching my one episode of 'I'm a celebrity...' and I asked my wife, 'Who's that?' and she doesn't know says something about us and the circles we move in, but also says something about being in the public eye - needing enough media attention to keep your name known and you picture shown, but not getting so much that the life you spread all over the international media doesn't get invaded by the press...
John the Baptist is the antithesis of celebrity culture. Whatever he does or says he points beyond himself, and points others there too, Godward,
'...John the Baptist stands as an example to us of one who is prepared, in all humility, to recognize that he is not the centre but the periphery; not the attraction but the signpost to the attraction; not the Light but the one who helps others to see the Light. Jesus’ calling to us all is that we pick up the ‘baton’ on John and become witnesses to the one who brings salvation to the world.
John the Baptist’s message of repentance involves a huge reorientation in which the centre of our being becomes no longer ourselves but one who is much, much greater.
The waiting we do at Advent reminds us of the importance of taking up John’s baton of witness and passing it on, and of re-orientating ourselves outwards from the centre of our lives so there is room for Jesus in the centre of our being...'
The Meaning is in the Waiting, page 76, by Paula Gooder.
John lives out God's kingdom values and as Advent people so should we. John is not the centre but the periphery. When God is at the centre, striving after celebrity pales into insignificance. When God is at the centre, those who are on the edge - the poor, the lonely, the sick, the grieving become the centre of our world, of God's world. When God is at the centre, my 15 minutes (and more if I can get it) of fame don't matter, others do.
This mentality is what society lacks, what Christmas lacks, what my life so often lacks. John the Baptist, teach us, show us and Maranatha, come Lord Jesus!
A Blog for Advent 2012
Sunday, 7 December 2008
Saturday, 6 December 2008
6th December 2008
A practical post...
The average UK household spends £420 a year on food that could have been eaten but ends up being thrown away. I have no idea whether more at Christmas time.
What's more, producing, transporting and consuming food is responsible for nearly a third of individuals' contribution to climate change.
Making a few simple changes to the way you shop for food can save pounds on your shopping bill and slim down your carbon footprint. This weekend try to buy fruit and vegetables grown in the UK. Get into the habit of waiting for a food to be in season before you buy it.
This is timely in the current credit crisis, but also about God's justice being exercised by His Advent people...
Find out more at http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home/out-shopping/buying-food-and-drink.html
The average UK household spends £420 a year on food that could have been eaten but ends up being thrown away. I have no idea whether more at Christmas time.
What's more, producing, transporting and consuming food is responsible for nearly a third of individuals' contribution to climate change.
Making a few simple changes to the way you shop for food can save pounds on your shopping bill and slim down your carbon footprint. This weekend try to buy fruit and vegetables grown in the UK. Get into the habit of waiting for a food to be in season before you buy it.
This is timely in the current credit crisis, but also about God's justice being exercised by His Advent people...
Find out more at http://campaigns.direct.gov.uk/actonco2/home/out-shopping/buying-food-and-drink.html
Thursday, 4 December 2008
5th December 2008
Count your blessings while you wait - think about the things that make you happy...
"We don't have a series of packages descending from heaven labelled 'love from God'. You have something much better - which is the love of God."
The Rt Revd Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
November 2008
"We don't have a series of packages descending from heaven labelled 'love from God'. You have something much better - which is the love of God."
The Rt Revd Dr Rowan Williams, Archbishop of Canterbury
November 2008
Wednesday, 3 December 2008
December 4th 2008
(I am indebted to Stephen Cotterell's 'Do nothing Christmas is Coming' for this post)
The TV is starting to go Christmas mad. The links between programmes all have snow or hats and scarves and a distinctly wintery/Christmassy feel. The same is true of the adverts, now decked with jingle bells, Santas, conifers, decorations and so on... If I see another beaming family, around a yuletide table eating more food than they will ever need, pulling executive crackers, I think I will...
A significant number of people, especially at this time of year, accuse the church of peddling myths. 'Oh we'll come to church at Christmas... it's just for the kids...' I have heard those words... The real Christmas myth is the one that the TV channels are peddling - doting parents, satisfied children, stress free 25th December...
The story of family life at the heart of the Christmas story couldn't be more different. It has a teenage girl, pregnant outside marriage. She's nearly dumped and then supported by her older partner. They travel across boarders and territories to conform to the tax regulations of the day. There is nowhere for the child to be born other than in the outhouse at the back of a local pub. No midwife. No gas and air. No clean sheets. No epidural.
This Christmas story is a story that could be set in contemporary Britain. It is closer to the real family life of many than any of the commercials you will see in the next 3 weeks or so. It shows a family struggling and supporting each other through enormous challenges.
Advent is a good time to be reminded that God was at the very heart of the lives of that dysfunctional family. God longs to be at the heart of our lives - however dysfunctional they may or may not be this week. God showed love, life-changing love through that family... what can we do to show love to ours?
The TV is starting to go Christmas mad. The links between programmes all have snow or hats and scarves and a distinctly wintery/Christmassy feel. The same is true of the adverts, now decked with jingle bells, Santas, conifers, decorations and so on... If I see another beaming family, around a yuletide table eating more food than they will ever need, pulling executive crackers, I think I will...
A significant number of people, especially at this time of year, accuse the church of peddling myths. 'Oh we'll come to church at Christmas... it's just for the kids...' I have heard those words... The real Christmas myth is the one that the TV channels are peddling - doting parents, satisfied children, stress free 25th December...
The story of family life at the heart of the Christmas story couldn't be more different. It has a teenage girl, pregnant outside marriage. She's nearly dumped and then supported by her older partner. They travel across boarders and territories to conform to the tax regulations of the day. There is nowhere for the child to be born other than in the outhouse at the back of a local pub. No midwife. No gas and air. No clean sheets. No epidural.
This Christmas story is a story that could be set in contemporary Britain. It is closer to the real family life of many than any of the commercials you will see in the next 3 weeks or so. It shows a family struggling and supporting each other through enormous challenges.
Advent is a good time to be reminded that God was at the very heart of the lives of that dysfunctional family. God longs to be at the heart of our lives - however dysfunctional they may or may not be this week. God showed love, life-changing love through that family... what can we do to show love to ours?
The Four Last Things - Death
The first Wednesday Advent address on the Four Last Things... This week... death... I am indebted to Richard Holloway's 'Anger Sex Doubt Death.'
They say that there are only 2 things certain in life - death and taxes. In the current financial climate I wouldn’t dream of talking about taxes. I do though, on this the first of four Advent addresses, want to talk about death.
During Advent, the church has traditionally meditated on what it calls the Four Last Things - death, judgement, heaven and hell. They are traditionally the things that the dying contemplate on before the inevitable, or to put another way, they are the four things that the dead encounter after death.
In society in general death is marginalised. In former generations death usually occurred at home and was followed by burial in the churchyard at the centre of the community; more typically nowadays death happens in an institution followed by a funeral at an out of town venue. In order to put off the idea of our mortality we use an increasing array of means to mitigate the effects of ageing - creams, diets, exercise, surgery etc. And its not just that purple is the new black, no, today 60 is the new 40.
Funerals themselves have changed. In the Book of Common Prayer there the service was frankly entitled ‘Burial of the dead’. More and more we have ‘Services of Thanksgiving.’ The funeral is turned into a version of ‘This is your life’; the death of the subject is conveniently ignored. And even within supposedly Christian funerals there is pressure for elements which are scarcely compatible with Christian belief. All too often I am asked if we can have what purports to be a poem about death:
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was…
These words were written by Henry Scott Holland when he was a Canon of St Paul’s cathedral in London. But they weren’t written as a poem, these words, and the longer version usually quoted, were part of a sermon. Scott Holland fashions these words to encapsulate one response to death, a response which often comes in the immediate wake of a death but which swiftly evaporates. Alongside this response to death he expressed another view:
Death ‘makes all we do here meaningless and empty…. It is the cruel ambush into which we are snared... It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters It makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us. We get no consideration from it. Often and often it stumbles in like an evil mischance, like a feckless misfortune. Its shadow falls across our natural sunlight, and we are swept off into some black abyss. There is no light or hope in the grave; there is no reason to be wrung out of it.’
Though from the same Scott Holland sermon, this extract is not read at funerals. But death for the Christian is neither ‘nothing at all’ nor is there ‘no light or hope in the grave’, as the Canon goes on to explain.
Paul writes in Rom 6:23 ‘the wages of sin is death’. Death is a serious thing, it is not a trivial or illusory as the first scenario from Scott Holland suggests. But Paul’s verse continues ‘but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’. Therefore the second scenario from Scott Holland is also wide of the mark. For us as Christians therefore we can own on the one hand the seriousness of death, but also to our hope that it does not have the final word; hence Paul can taunt death, I Cor 15:55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?"
Christian hope in the face of death is an abiding trust in the God who called us out of nothing into life and who will call us again to life out of the second nothing of death. We have no security in ourselves, no false hopes, no naive longings. Our only ground for hope is the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
This hope is founded on expectation - on the expectation that death is not the end of life and that hope is rooted in God alone. Our expectations lie in the promise of a reliable God who already, in Christ, set the action of our resurrection in motion. God defeated death by raising Christ from the dead at Easter, and his resurrection is the assurance and beginning our of resurrection.
Death reminds us that we are indeed mortal. Dust we are and to dust we shall return. But remember out of that dust God made human beings and to that dust he gave the gift of life an through faith in Christ he brings that dust to the kingdom of heaven.
Death reminds us of the weakness but also the glory of humanity. Weakness because the universe ultimately defeats us, brings us to dissolution and reminds us that we are dust just dust. We must never be tempted to see Christ’s own death as at best God’s identification to our plight or at worst God’s last ditch rescue mission, for Christ’s death on the cross stands between our fallenness and our fulfilment, between the dust from which we come and the glory towards which we move, between Eden and the New Jerusalem. The resurrection of Jesus confirms this for us. We may be dust, but we assured through the resurrection of Christ, that we are glorious dust through the will of Him who had the first word not allowing death to have the last word. Amen
They say that there are only 2 things certain in life - death and taxes. In the current financial climate I wouldn’t dream of talking about taxes. I do though, on this the first of four Advent addresses, want to talk about death.
During Advent, the church has traditionally meditated on what it calls the Four Last Things - death, judgement, heaven and hell. They are traditionally the things that the dying contemplate on before the inevitable, or to put another way, they are the four things that the dead encounter after death.
In society in general death is marginalised. In former generations death usually occurred at home and was followed by burial in the churchyard at the centre of the community; more typically nowadays death happens in an institution followed by a funeral at an out of town venue. In order to put off the idea of our mortality we use an increasing array of means to mitigate the effects of ageing - creams, diets, exercise, surgery etc. And its not just that purple is the new black, no, today 60 is the new 40.
Funerals themselves have changed. In the Book of Common Prayer there the service was frankly entitled ‘Burial of the dead’. More and more we have ‘Services of Thanksgiving.’ The funeral is turned into a version of ‘This is your life’; the death of the subject is conveniently ignored. And even within supposedly Christian funerals there is pressure for elements which are scarcely compatible with Christian belief. All too often I am asked if we can have what purports to be a poem about death:
Death is nothing at all. It does not count. I have only slipped away into the next room. Nothing has happened. Everything remains exactly as it was…
These words were written by Henry Scott Holland when he was a Canon of St Paul’s cathedral in London. But they weren’t written as a poem, these words, and the longer version usually quoted, were part of a sermon. Scott Holland fashions these words to encapsulate one response to death, a response which often comes in the immediate wake of a death but which swiftly evaporates. Alongside this response to death he expressed another view:
Death ‘makes all we do here meaningless and empty…. It is the cruel ambush into which we are snared... It is the pit of destruction. It wrecks, it defeats, it shatters It makes its horrible breach in our gladness with careless and inhuman disregard of us. We get no consideration from it. Often and often it stumbles in like an evil mischance, like a feckless misfortune. Its shadow falls across our natural sunlight, and we are swept off into some black abyss. There is no light or hope in the grave; there is no reason to be wrung out of it.’
Though from the same Scott Holland sermon, this extract is not read at funerals. But death for the Christian is neither ‘nothing at all’ nor is there ‘no light or hope in the grave’, as the Canon goes on to explain.
Paul writes in Rom 6:23 ‘the wages of sin is death’. Death is a serious thing, it is not a trivial or illusory as the first scenario from Scott Holland suggests. But Paul’s verse continues ‘but the gift of God is eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord’. Therefore the second scenario from Scott Holland is also wide of the mark. For us as Christians therefore we can own on the one hand the seriousness of death, but also to our hope that it does not have the final word; hence Paul can taunt death, I Cor 15:55 "Where, O death, is your victory? Where, O grave, is your sting?"
Christian hope in the face of death is an abiding trust in the God who called us out of nothing into life and who will call us again to life out of the second nothing of death. We have no security in ourselves, no false hopes, no naive longings. Our only ground for hope is the God who raised Jesus Christ from the dead.
This hope is founded on expectation - on the expectation that death is not the end of life and that hope is rooted in God alone. Our expectations lie in the promise of a reliable God who already, in Christ, set the action of our resurrection in motion. God defeated death by raising Christ from the dead at Easter, and his resurrection is the assurance and beginning our of resurrection.
Death reminds us that we are indeed mortal. Dust we are and to dust we shall return. But remember out of that dust God made human beings and to that dust he gave the gift of life an through faith in Christ he brings that dust to the kingdom of heaven.
Death reminds us of the weakness but also the glory of humanity. Weakness because the universe ultimately defeats us, brings us to dissolution and reminds us that we are dust just dust. We must never be tempted to see Christ’s own death as at best God’s identification to our plight or at worst God’s last ditch rescue mission, for Christ’s death on the cross stands between our fallenness and our fulfilment, between the dust from which we come and the glory towards which we move, between Eden and the New Jerusalem. The resurrection of Jesus confirms this for us. We may be dust, but we assured through the resurrection of Christ, that we are glorious dust through the will of Him who had the first word not allowing death to have the last word. Amen
Tuesday, 2 December 2008
December 3rd 2008
Happy Birthday Richard...
It was reported yesterday that nearly 500 people have died in Zimbabwe from a cholera outbreak since August. A further nearly 12,000 cases have been identified over the same period.
Also, the man who murdered Vicky Hamilton some 17 years ago was jailed for at least 30 years.
Also, it is being claimed that there was an intelligence report warning of an attack not unlike the one in Mumbai in recent days...
There is so much more...
If that were not enough, the threat of unemployment is starting to become a reality to some of us as the credit crisis slides into serious recession...
And so on.
Advent is a season where the longings of the Christian and non Christian unite - these things have to stop. Things have to change. They must change. They cannot get any worse.
Back in 1966 the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger said, '...philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering Untergang for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us...' (Der Spiegel's 23 September 1966 interview with Heidegger, published posthumously, on 31 May 1976, translated by Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo in The Heidegger Controversy, edited by Richard Wolin.)
Heidegger's words lie at the very heart of Advent - we can try all we like by ethics, philosophy, politics, and force of will to stop the world and it's people being the way they are. Ultimately that yearning will be fruitless because, even the current round of problem could be resolved using these means, ultimately something else would 'pop up' to replace it.
Heidegger recognised that the only way of breaking out of that cycle, to discover what we all long for, was only by a god intervening.
This is Advent hope - longing for God to come to the world he made to bringing lasting liberation, freedom, justice and peace.
That would be a Christmas gift worth having...
It was reported yesterday that nearly 500 people have died in Zimbabwe from a cholera outbreak since August. A further nearly 12,000 cases have been identified over the same period.
Also, the man who murdered Vicky Hamilton some 17 years ago was jailed for at least 30 years.
Also, it is being claimed that there was an intelligence report warning of an attack not unlike the one in Mumbai in recent days...
There is so much more...
If that were not enough, the threat of unemployment is starting to become a reality to some of us as the credit crisis slides into serious recession...
And so on.
Advent is a season where the longings of the Christian and non Christian unite - these things have to stop. Things have to change. They must change. They cannot get any worse.
Back in 1966 the great German philosopher Martin Heidegger said, '...philosophy will not be able to effect an immediate transformation of the present condition of the world. This is not only true of philosophy, but of all merely human thought and endeavor. Only a god can save us. The sole possibility that is left for us is to prepare a sort of readiness, through thinking and poeticizing, for the appearance of the god or for the absence of the god in the time of foundering Untergang for in the face of the god who is absent, we founder. Only a God Can Save Us...' (Der Spiegel's 23 September 1966 interview with Heidegger, published posthumously, on 31 May 1976, translated by Maria P. Alter and John D. Caputo in The Heidegger Controversy, edited by Richard Wolin.)
Heidegger's words lie at the very heart of Advent - we can try all we like by ethics, philosophy, politics, and force of will to stop the world and it's people being the way they are. Ultimately that yearning will be fruitless because, even the current round of problem could be resolved using these means, ultimately something else would 'pop up' to replace it.
Heidegger recognised that the only way of breaking out of that cycle, to discover what we all long for, was only by a god intervening.
This is Advent hope - longing for God to come to the world he made to bringing lasting liberation, freedom, justice and peace.
That would be a Christmas gift worth having...
Monday, 1 December 2008
December 2nd 2008
A friend of mine had a day off yesterday - to go Christmas shopping with his wife. I tried to convince them that all he needed to do was carry the bags, produce the plastic to pay and to say nothing... There are only 23 shopping days to go after all... :-)
There is a great story about a government minister who was asked by a national newspaper what he wanted for Christmas. Not wanting to appear too grasping, he said that he rather liked those bottles of stem ginger that you see in the shops around this time of year. And so the article ran: ‘We asked leading figures what they wanted for Christmas. The Archbishop of Canterbury said he wanted an end to the violence in Iraq. The Dali Lama said he wanted peace in the Middle East. The Pope said he wanted an end to poverty. The Minister for Trade and Industry said he wanted a jar of stem ginger.’
Christmas tends to begin around December 1st with the office party and end around April 5th when we have really taken account of what we have spent. Even in the midst of the credit crunch the tills are busy and even the shops that are often empty seem more full. It's official, Christmas is the ultimate consumer festival.
The giving and receiving of presents can be wonderful and life giving. It can be an horrendous stress. We spend copious amounts of money that we cannot afford on presents that very often no-one wants. I don't have the stats to hand, but I wonder what percentage of the Christmas shop of the nation will be done online. I also wonder how if this Christmas will be simpler than some past. Either way, as we sit surrounded by delight, perhaps some disappointment and wrapping paper on December 25th I can't help wonder what all of that has to do with what Christmas is really about.
I don't suppose that for any of us the concept of Christmas shopping could be classed as retail therapy but it has become the way that we view the buying of gifts - a therapy.
"...‘Retail Therapy’ is a tongue-in-cheek phrase used to describe a particular approach to shopping. Hidden within it, however, is the germ of what can go wrong when the exercise of choice becomes an end in itself. We all need clothes, so living in a society that provides a choice of clothes at a reasonable price is a real benefit and a contribution to happiness. But when the consumer society persuades us that when we are unhappy shopping will make us happy again, then life has become unbalanced. If we are unhappy, we need to look at our interior choices, not at our shopping list.
In other words, simply choosing and choosing again can distract us from that interior world which is the true source of happiness. The exercise of external freedom can become a substitute for exercising internal freedom, a displacement activity that helps people avoid some hard interior choices. Rather than finding a new job they may need to spend more time with their family, instead of a holiday they may need to face their alcohol problem. At best, external choices can alleviate the symptoms, but they don’t lead to that interior delight that is the real source of happiness..." (From 'Finding Happiness' Pp35-37 by Abbot Christopher Jamison. Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.)
Hmmm... a therapy to modern living perhaps? The interior life, interior world, interior choices, interior delight... I think Christopher Jamison means the place in all of our lives where the moral, ethical and spiritual direction in all of us flow from. He alludes silently to St Augustine's '... our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you...' the place where God dwells.
Advent reminds us that God delights in us. He made each of us. He loves each of like a parent should love their child. When we are apart from those whom we love some describe that in physical terms as heart ache. We yearn for our lover, our spouse, our children. God yearns for his children whom he made; he longs for his bride The Church. Advent is that scene in the movie, where in slo-mo, God runs to us and we run to God, embracing passionately.
I started out with this about present shopping, but Advent is about gifts. God's gift to us of himself - rushing as an eager lover to us. Advent is also about our gift of ourselves to God, for if we fill our lives with presents this Christmas - wanted or not - we ultimately still feel empty. We all long for lasting love. For hope in bleakness. For peace in the turmoil that most of our frantic lives are.
Why not give God a present this Christmas - a restless heart, and find in him what you are really looking for.
There is a great story about a government minister who was asked by a national newspaper what he wanted for Christmas. Not wanting to appear too grasping, he said that he rather liked those bottles of stem ginger that you see in the shops around this time of year. And so the article ran: ‘We asked leading figures what they wanted for Christmas. The Archbishop of Canterbury said he wanted an end to the violence in Iraq. The Dali Lama said he wanted peace in the Middle East. The Pope said he wanted an end to poverty. The Minister for Trade and Industry said he wanted a jar of stem ginger.’
Christmas tends to begin around December 1st with the office party and end around April 5th when we have really taken account of what we have spent. Even in the midst of the credit crunch the tills are busy and even the shops that are often empty seem more full. It's official, Christmas is the ultimate consumer festival.
The giving and receiving of presents can be wonderful and life giving. It can be an horrendous stress. We spend copious amounts of money that we cannot afford on presents that very often no-one wants. I don't have the stats to hand, but I wonder what percentage of the Christmas shop of the nation will be done online. I also wonder how if this Christmas will be simpler than some past. Either way, as we sit surrounded by delight, perhaps some disappointment and wrapping paper on December 25th I can't help wonder what all of that has to do with what Christmas is really about.
I don't suppose that for any of us the concept of Christmas shopping could be classed as retail therapy but it has become the way that we view the buying of gifts - a therapy.
"...‘Retail Therapy’ is a tongue-in-cheek phrase used to describe a particular approach to shopping. Hidden within it, however, is the germ of what can go wrong when the exercise of choice becomes an end in itself. We all need clothes, so living in a society that provides a choice of clothes at a reasonable price is a real benefit and a contribution to happiness. But when the consumer society persuades us that when we are unhappy shopping will make us happy again, then life has become unbalanced. If we are unhappy, we need to look at our interior choices, not at our shopping list.
In other words, simply choosing and choosing again can distract us from that interior world which is the true source of happiness. The exercise of external freedom can become a substitute for exercising internal freedom, a displacement activity that helps people avoid some hard interior choices. Rather than finding a new job they may need to spend more time with their family, instead of a holiday they may need to face their alcohol problem. At best, external choices can alleviate the symptoms, but they don’t lead to that interior delight that is the real source of happiness..." (From 'Finding Happiness' Pp35-37 by Abbot Christopher Jamison. Published by Weidenfeld and Nicolson.)
Hmmm... a therapy to modern living perhaps? The interior life, interior world, interior choices, interior delight... I think Christopher Jamison means the place in all of our lives where the moral, ethical and spiritual direction in all of us flow from. He alludes silently to St Augustine's '... our hearts are restless till they find their rest in you...' the place where God dwells.
Advent reminds us that God delights in us. He made each of us. He loves each of like a parent should love their child. When we are apart from those whom we love some describe that in physical terms as heart ache. We yearn for our lover, our spouse, our children. God yearns for his children whom he made; he longs for his bride The Church. Advent is that scene in the movie, where in slo-mo, God runs to us and we run to God, embracing passionately.
I started out with this about present shopping, but Advent is about gifts. God's gift to us of himself - rushing as an eager lover to us. Advent is also about our gift of ourselves to God, for if we fill our lives with presents this Christmas - wanted or not - we ultimately still feel empty. We all long for lasting love. For hope in bleakness. For peace in the turmoil that most of our frantic lives are.
Why not give God a present this Christmas - a restless heart, and find in him what you are really looking for.
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