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The last day of the Year
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with the Right Rev Stephen Cottrell, the archbishop of York.
A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Right Reverend Stephen Cottrell, the Archbishop of York
Good morning
The last day of the year. A day for sober recollection.
What should we recall of the story of Christ, the son of Mary?
Well, God comes to us not because of anything we deserve or earn, but because of God’s great love for us.
Here is the point of the Christmas story: the child born in the manger at Bethlehem; born into a confused and divided world; born into poverty and exile, is the son of God. In Christ, God’s purposes are worked out, made manifest and made ‘receivable’ in human flesh. For God, whom we imagined to be outside us and beyond us, has now, in this child, come very close.
He has some amazing titles: King of Kings and Lord of Lords. But most of all he is ‘Jesus’, the God who saves us. And ‘Emmanuel’, the God who is with us.
He will do some amazing things. But in ways we could never imagine, for most of all he is going to do it by love. It is the depths and breadth of God’s love that is revealed in the manger.
If we decide to follow him, next year as we have tried to do this year, if we throw ourselves upon his mercy, if we accept his love, if we receive what he longs to give us, then we too become children of God, we too are born again.
And so I pray, Incarnate God, be born in us, make us heirs to the hope of eternal life, forgive the wrong turnings and many failings of the past year. Begin again in our hearts today and tomorrow and in all the tomorrows that await us.
Amen.