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“Greetings. As we head rapidly towards Christmas 2025, I want to wish all of you a very merry Christmas and a happy new year.
As we wish one another, our friends and family, a very merry Christmas this year, we do it with a huge degree of solemnity. It’s not the merriest Christmas in the history of humanity. Wars that a year ago we hoped might have come to a peaceful end by now are not yet there. Worse, just over the Tasman from New Zealand a couple of days ago, two gunmen killed a whole bunch of people, God’s people, the Jews, and people are in hospital needing our prayers as they suffer from their wounds. More may yet die. This is a very difficult day in human history and for the history of us who live in Australasia.
What can we say out of the Christmas story that encourages us and helps us to move forward into next year being a good year in the life of God’s people? Well, it struck me that we cannot in this world do much about the people who have the most power and cause the most disruption – the people who have the guns, who have the means to wage war against one another. But we can do the things that God calls us to do. Like Mary and Joseph, we can be faithful in responding to what God is asking us to do.
Mary was asked to bear the Child who would be the Messiah, Jesus the Christ. Joseph was asked to stick with her in marriage and to be her husband and a father to that baby. They both responded. They said yes, not to a glamorous world-famous task but to the simple task of caring for another human being.
So as we head into the new year, may we say yes to God and to the opportunities that come our way to serve one another, to care for one another, and to love those whom God wants us to love. May it be that a year from now we have a much merrier, a much more peaceful Christmas on this planet. God bless you.”
Bishop Peter Carrell
Anglican Diocese of Christchurch, New Zealand.