On Christmas morning when the beach is calling and the family’s gathering and the presents are a mystery (or definitely feels book-shaped anyway), and after the splendour and celebration of Christmas Eve, we don’t want Christmas Day to be an anticlimax. We’ve gifted our Oxfam goats or geese and bought our CWS calendars, and what we’d like, on Christmas Day, what we really want, is for things to be—perfect. Just like the old days. Something new, but also something familiar.And that’s what’s so wonderful about the Christmas story, and why preachers penning their reflections approach with trepidation but also with joy: at Christmas, the news is all good.

~ Bronwyn Angela White

Bronwyn Angela White Christmas Familiar Joy New

(from a prayer for inclusiveness):O god whose face changes as we move and learn and change, whose image becomes less like ours and more like that of the stranger we treat as a friend; the god whom we create from the sum of all we know that is wonderful, generous, true and wise: May we see ourselves in the god-ness of others and ourselves in their image of you.

~ Bronwyn Angela White

Bronwyn Angela White Create Friend God Ness Image