Thought for the Week

By The Revd Canon Gordon Fyfe, Rector of St Columba’s Scottish Episcopal Church

I hope that you enjoyed your Christmas Day and that it had something about it that brought surprise and joy. This, of course, is a big hope. Soon after the great day itself the decorations can seem like clutter and we long to get back to some normality. Yet this Christmas season lasts for 12 days. For many, this prolonged period of compulsory festiv-ity can, in fact, be the most difficult time of the year. The pressure to make things perfect is great and, as we approach the end of an old year and the dawn of a new one, we may well find ourselves in a reflective mood. Many find this stressful as our minds fill with past loss and regret or a real anxiety about just what the New Year will bring us and those whom we love.

I guess the whole point of this Christmas season being the length that it is could, in fact, be really quite helpful to us. These 12 days allow us time to contemplate the enormity of what God has done for us by sending his Son Jesus Christ into the world. From all eter-nity he came to share our human life and experience; to live in time and space as we do; to know our limitations, our worries and our difficulties.

His coming is not confined to past history nor the promise of his coming in glory to a dis-tant future; for ‘God is with us’. Where does he meet us? In the present, for this is the only place we really live.

As we move into a New Year may we always remember that, “The past is history, the fu-ture is a mystery, but today is a gift - that is why it is called the present!”