WHEN I started my year as Moderator, I was asked if I had a theme.
"Yes," I said. "My theme is 'Hope'."
"Hope? Catch yourself on," they said. At the time, we were living through one of the most hopeless moments in our history.
Furlough payments were being reduced and would soon end. Businesses were under threat of closure. The pandemic was not going away. People were dying in hospital. The health services, north and south, were under enormous pressure. There was even violence on the streets of Belfast, where buses were burning. Hope? Really?
The big issues facing our political leaders might appear to be impossible to resolve. The future of the Northern Ireland Protocol; legacy of the northern Troubles; a delicate coalition in Dublin; managing Covid-19; the challenges to community mental health; the strained relations between governments across all these islands, to say nothing of international tensions, migration and the perennial threat of war - all this and more might suggest there is no hope for the future. I beg to differ.
The Christmas story is saturated with hope. Mary was a young teenage mum, far from home and uncertain about the future. But she insisted: "God has remembered me... he took one good look at me, and see what happened. I'm the most fortunate woman on earth."
Hope transformed a tough time dealing with an unexpected pregnancy, into a deep blessing.
Later, to save their baby's life, the young couple fled their home becoming refugees on the run. But they never gave up, or lost their vision for the future.
Hope kept them going - and they survived, eventually returning home to their village, where their son Jesus would grow up.
For people of faith, hope is not mere wishful thinking. Hope is the realistic and gritty trust that promises made by God will be kept.
It strengthens your back, lengthens your stride and lifts your head. It focuses your eye, gives you ears to hear and eyes to see that God has not gone away - even in these exceptionally challenging and uncertain times.
Hope is the essence of Christmas. This year I had the privilege of visiting the Ulster Memorial Tower at Thiepval in northern France. It commemorates the courage and sacrifice of so many thousands who fought and died in the sheer carnage of the Battle of the Somme in 1916.
Earlier, in that first war-torn Christmas of 1914, it is well known that the guns fell silent and just for a time, British and German soldiers came out of their trenches and met in no-man's land to exchange gifts, and even play football together.
This informal truce continued for several days. War ceased. Peace reigned. It was miraculous.
When we catch ourselves on, and think about what truly matters to God and each other, war can cease - the guns can fall silent, as they largely have in Northern Ireland. God steps in. We catch ourselves on. There is hope.
I love Ireland, in all its parts, because it is my home. But I hate our short-sightedness which pushes kids on to the streets to burn buses, and I lament our evident lack of capacity to see common humanity in the 'other'.
At Christmas, it is as if God whispers in our ear - "Catch yourself on..." - and through this astonishing act of love from Bethlehem, flows all the power that gives us hope for the future. Happy Christmas.
