How we find hope in the difficulties of today's world is the topic of Bishop Nick's Christmas message for 2024.
The Rt Revd Nick Baines, Bishop of Leeds, has produced a Christmas reflection, which can be seen on this page or read below.
"Life is hard. People are sinful. God is love. That's how one person has summed up what Christmas and what Christianity are all about.
"And sometimes there's some virtue in just pulling it down to something simple. The Canadian singer-songwriter Bruce Cockburn, said, and this really is evocative for me, he wrote, “Like a stone on the surface of a still river, driving the ripples on forever. Redemption rips through the surface of time in the cry of a tiny babe.”
"And I think that's what Christmas is about. It's the surprise, the shock that however we expect God to enter our world and sort out our problems, and there are of plenty of them, he shocks everyone by coming in as a tiny baby.
"So we're doing something deeply subversive at Christmas. Subverting the expectations of what power looks like. Of how God might be expected to behave.
"And I hope that this Christmas we will rediscover, perhaps look for it in a different way, but rediscover the presence of God, not in our prejudices and our expectations, but in the baby who frustrates our ways of seeing, our ways of thinking. A baby who is vulnerable, born into a world as full of contradictions and danger as ours today.
"Former Bishop of Durham David Jenkins summed up the faith when he said, “God is. God is as he is in Jesus. So there is hope.”
"And that's what I want to commend this Christmas. I hope it will be a very happy Christmas amidst all that's going on in the world and in the church and in our own lives.
"Life is hard. People are sinful. God is love. So there is hope. Happy Christmas.