Church of England Bishop of Portsmouth's Christmas message

MAY I wish readers of the News a wonderful Christmas, prosperous New Year and commend, with all my heart, the work of The Children’s Society?

Perhaps you might imagine this recommendation as my gift to you, wrapped up and offered with love and prayer? You can unwrap it at childrenssociety.org.uk

Why do I commend The Children’s Society? Simply, this charity offers us a doorway into the presence, company, and priorities of Mary’s child, Jesus.

NOW READ: ‘The Christmas story gives us hope that things will get better’

For at Christmas we celebrate an unexpected discovery: God in littleness and vulnerability.

For Christians believe that when the living God is revealed to the world, both then and now, revelation occurs at the edge or margin, rather than within the political or cultural mainstream.

It is in the birth of Mary’s Little One, Jesus, that Christians - throughout time and within almost every culture and society on earth – discover hope, new priorities and a sense of meaning and purpose nothing else can give.

To put it in another way, there is a pattern which can be traced, then followed up, in the story of Christmas.

One great writer on the Christian life described God as a ‘beckoning word’. It was a beautiful, simple picture of God – through Jesus Christ – inviting and insistently drawing us to join him where he waits for us.

And where is Jesus Christ found? Where does he wait? Among the little ones of society; the broken; the vulnerable; those who know their need of forgiveness; with the left-behind and among those out of sight or on the edge of our awareness or expectation.

We can welcome the Christ child in any context, at any time. The Christmas carol provides us with a prayer we can offer ourselves: ‘O Holy Child of Bethlehem, descend to us we pray… cast out our sin and enter in be born in us today.’

But it can take a moment of revelation, a shift in awareness to recognise and to receive the living God in this unexpected Child, born under occupation and who will grow to be crucified as a rebel on the edge of empire.

Ten minutes with The Children’s Society can begin such a shift and revelation. Happy Christmas!