President's Christmas Message Transcript
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As we
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move towards Christmas, many of us find ourselves wearied by the last couple
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of years, life under lockdown has affected most of us one way or another.
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We have missed seeing family and friends.
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Many of us had have had commemorations
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and celebrations canceled or curtailed.
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Many businesses have suffered and people are worried
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about their financial future and the security of their job.
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We are concerned about the well-being of our young people.
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We are worried about our older friends and family.
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Many of the routines that helped us navigate our daily lives
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have been disrupted or lost alongside COVID.
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Many of us are anxious about the world, about the lack of vaccine
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justice, about growing tension in our region
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and about climate change and the very real threat.
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The Earth can no longer sustain life in a meaningful way.
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As I reflected on what troubles us,
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a line from a Christmas Carol came to me singing of Jesus.
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It says the hopes and fears of all the years I met in the tonight
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Christmas is the celebration of God entering into human life
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in flesh and bone and coming among us as a baby.
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God enters into the riskiness of human life,
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the risk of disease and death of illness and injury.
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The risk of loneliness, alienation and rejection of living
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as a member of a colonized people in a world of injustice.
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Jesus meets our fears
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showing God is not distant from the world, but fully in the world.
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In meeting our fears, Jesus brings hope.
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Jesus brings hope that God not only witnesses the suffering
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of the world, but enters into it in solidarity.
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Hope that Jesus crosses boundaries, eats and drinks with sinners,
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and the outcast loves abundantly hope that God is with us among us
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alongside us in Jesus, who is the face of God's love .
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The voice of God's justice and the embodiment of God's mercy.
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And so our fears are met and held in God's hope and love.
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This Christmas, may you know this hope and love.