Christmas Day need not be a time where we have to conjure up abstract feelings of joy and celebration – rather, Christmas Day is a reminder that darkness is not the end. Darkness marks the time of beginning - again.

And as we engage in the particular lives of those around us, especially those lonely, vulnerable and in need, we are participating with Jesus in setting the table for the whole world.

Jesus was anyone and everyone who has ever known exclusion, prejudice, abuse and exploitation, Jesus was anyone and everyone who has ever been the victim of injustice, violence, manipulation, fraud or public shame. And that Jesus is God. That is our God.

The Good News, the gospel of Jesus, was that the Kingdom of God was here, not an empire or a nation state with borders and weapons, but an experience of the sacred, a sacred world, already around us, among us, planted like seeds, growing like trees...

Think back on some of the significant conversations you’ve had in your life – a conversation that changed you or the direction you were heading in life. What was it about that interaction?

I cannot give you all the answers now, can I?