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A spiritual comment and prayer to begin the day with Canon Rachel Mann

Good morning.

Today, on this last Friday before Christmas, I want to reflect on the power of waiting and expectation.

When I was a small child I wasn’t very good at it. Forty-plus years ago in the days before Christmas I would already be counting down the hours to the arrival of Santa. I couldn’t concentrate on anything except the prospect of having a full stocking of goodies. My heart ached with expectation, catching glimpses of Santa Claus out of the corner of my eye as we prepared for the big day.

As an adult, I’m a little less naïve. I am more inclined to make harsh judgments about the commercial nature of Christmas. I fear that at times in my adult life I’m less like a person looking for the arrival of gifts and more like the Ice Queen in C.S.Lewis’s Narnia where ‘it is always winter but never Christmas.’

Of course, as a Christian, I want to be full of expectation. I don’t want to lose sight of the fact that the weeks before Christmas are the season of Advent. It is a season of fasting and prayer, a preparation, not only for the celebration of Jesus’s birth at Christmas, but of his return at the end of time. It is a season full of waiting, expectation and hope.

Both the child and the adult versions of me share excitement and expectation about Christmas. If I no longer think Santa will bring me a longed-for gift, I wait excitedly for the feast of Jesus’ birth. I wait for peace on earth and goodwill to all. I think such things are worth waiting and longing for.

God of Peace, as Christmas nears, fill my heart with hope and may your world know the love which heals broken hearts.

Amen.

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