Issue No 197
Magazine for the Builth, Irfon and Wye Valley Churches December 2017 & January 2018
Peace on Earth
by Alan Jevons One of the songs that used to be popular at this time of year is that old crooner from Bing Crosby "Have yourself a merry little Christmas, let your heart be light. From now on your troubles will be out of sight.". If we’re honest, this message of peace and goodwill that Christmas engenders can at times feel very shallow. The nearest the Irish rock band U2 got to a Christmas record was a song called "Peace on Earth". It talks about the huge difference between the way we wish things were and what actually happens in reality. The song talks about a mother who cries for peace on earth ... "She never got to say goodbye, to see the colour in his eyes, now he's in the dirt, that's peace on earth." And then think over the events of this last year ... those lives which have been lost this past year as a result of war or terrorism. 2017, as I write, has so far seen 1039 attacks and 6,657 fatalities as a result of terrorism around out world. Will Christmas this year change all this? I don't want to be a kill joy. There is indeed I believe a wonder and a magic to Christmas. But this is a wonder and a magic which confronts the reality of the way things are. It is a wonder and a magic which should change us and perhaps stimulate us into changing the way we live our lives and the way our world organises itself. If not then the Christmas message will indeed be pure sentimentality and, as U2 sing, "hope and history won't rhyme." There is that often-quoted story from George Macleod, a minister working in a rough area of Glasgow. He tells the tale of a stained-glass window in his Church which had the message "Glory to God in the highest" underneath a picture of the nativity. One night a local youth threw a stone through the window and knocked out the "e" in "highest". George Macleod said that the message now read "Glory to God in the high st." ... and he felt this was a more appropriate message than the original. If we cannot make this connection then the Christmas hope will probably fade away just as fast as the words of sentimental Christmas songs ... and we will be right to ask, "What's it worth?�
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The reality is that the joy of Christmas is always in stark contrast to the events which are happening in the world at the same time. The wonder of Christmas, the incarnation, is that God comes to us where we are. And we as Christians can never retreat into a comfortable and selfish world of our own, battening up the hatches. God cannot be found apart from the world's sorrows, only within them, but the glory is that God shares his life within that sorrow and wants it to be the place of new life.
Archdeacon Alan EDITORSHIP Under new editoriship. Please note new email address: signpostsmagazine@gmail.com