Paradox, Peace and War at Christmas

There is no lightness or frivolity in the peace that Peter Menzies (Cardus Senior Fellow) has written about in his recent reflection on Christmas. War is ugly and destructive. We proclaim peace at Christmas not as a trite and flaky thing that we can pair up with rainbows and unicorns but as a deep hope in the redemptive possibilities that humanity aches for. Christmas often is, but should not be, an escape from the complex difficulties that beset us all. It is instead a chance to consider costly grace and the deadly encounters that have brought many of us a measure of peace. We must work to celebrate without trivializing joy, peace, kindness and good will. Scrooge, when he experiences his redemption, may be giddy with joy, but his immediate decisions involve bringing equity to the relationships he is in, including economic equity. Among the various dimensions of Dickens' genius was a capacity to make us look at what really is there in the grinding poverty of a broken city and in that looking, to see a hope greater than the misery. I'm grateful for that today.