Christmas wishes and reflections
I am having a rather unusual Christmas, wrapped up in bed in north Bucks nursing a bad seasonal lurgy while my husband and kids eat Christmas lunch with my sister and her family in London. It isn't how I would choose to spend Christmas but, ironically, I feel more blessed this year than many others.
This morning I was woken by my two grown up kids (who still get a stocking each year) and later tonight they will return full of turkey, sprouts and Christmas cheer, but as the door closed behind them this morning, and the house went quiet, my mind turned to all those for whom the absence of family on his holy day will be total. For whom there’s no-one who will call to wish them a merry Christmas (all those they have loved having died or forgotten them); the silence broken only by only the sound of the TV; the loneliness wrapping around them like a shroud.
Usually as, we say grace before our festive lunch, we pray as a family for those who are alone at Christmas but in the busyness of the day, I rarely have the chance to really reflect on what this means. Today, however, once again illness, has given me the space to truly reflect and, as I hold those who are alone today in my heart, I wonder how did society come to this?
How did we allow this lack of love? This cannot be how God designed us to live and it must break his heart to see all those alone on this day that most symbolises the love of family; that of that Jesus’s earthly one but most of all the love of our heavenly Father who devised a way to ensure that we are all part of His heavenly family.
So today as I have been granted this space, I will be praying earnestly that all who believe that they are forsaken will be visited by the reassurance that they DO have a family. That they will know in the deepest core of their being that they are part of the greatest loving family of all, and that they are never, ever truly alone.
This is the greatest Christmas gift all.
Wishing you all a wonderful Christmas filled with love.
Kate
If you would like to do more to help those who are alone on this day (as well as the other 364 days of the year) please have a look at Age UK’s Hardest Day appeal link 👉 https://bit.ly/46OyM4J