It’s late September as I ramble in my thinking toward the end of 2024 and the dawn of 2025. With the Middle East on fire, should I be thinking about the end of the world as well?

Here in the Wolds, most fields are now bare and many already mucked, sprayed and tilled for the next sowing.  I have however, spotted a few maize, bean and flax fields still awaiting the harvester’s attention.  Summer has gone and once again, plenty of rain has been falling. Autumn colours have browned and flamed and our resident, chunky hedgehog will soon be looking for a hollow in which to snuggle and over-winter.  The cycle of the Seasons is nearing completion for yet another year as we sink towards deep climate-changed winter and approach the shortest day of the year. The darkest days are here and it’s time to hunker down in the duvet or snuggle in front of the glowing log-burner with games, the TV or a good book.

Its ‘build-up’ time to another Christmas.  Dark days need some jollity, lightness and brightness.  How about singing a carol or, a rush to the shops to clear the shelves or, grabbing those gift catalogues pushed through the letter box (and thence to the bin?) to search for a little something for Auntie Mabel or, a last-minute dash to the computer for inspiration, for a forgotten present that can be on your doorstep tomorrow?

I hope you have strong family ties that will give you a buzz, a glow of expectation and lightness as Christmas approaches. Whether your Christmas is quiet and peaceful, a teaming and tumbling family party, a chance to escape from the dazzle, or sadly, a lonely time perhaps dogged by sickness or worse, bereavement, I hope you will have time to think about the Bethlehem story.  Let it be longer than a glance at the images on Christmas cards; a cringe at the canned carols playing in a superstore or attending an off-beat Nativity play by the little ones at the village school.  Just as we celebrate our birthdays, so the annual celebration of Christ’s birth, God becoming man, well, an innocent baby at the time, is what makes Christmas so important for Christians.

In the Bible, John 3:16 says that ‘God loved His world, this world, the Blue Planet, SO much that he had to connect with us at our level by being born among us as human (Jesus) so that if we can bring ourselves to believe and trust Him (thus avoiding self-destruction), we can have and will have Eternal life’. Amid all the searching and uncertainty in the world today this might be the only answer that works. I happen to think it is. Dust off that Bible and have a read.

The News and countless Charity Appeals tell us of hurt, chaos, warring, fear, greed, loneliness, sickness, famine and deprivation in so many places and lives. It is obvious how mankind is more expert than ever at making a mess of the world. In the meantime, I hang on to the ‘HOPE’ I have, that started with the baby Jesus.  Ridiculous as this baby can seem he is the basis of the Happiest Christmas.

HAPPY CHRISTMAS & MAY 2025 BE A WONDERFUL YEAR FOR YOU ALL

George