When we begin to glimpse the reality of God, the natural reaction is to worship him. Not to have that reaction is a fairly sure sign that we haven't yet really understood who he is or what he's done.

Christmas is God lighting a candle; and you don't light a candle in a room that's already full of sunlight. You light a candle in a room that's so murky that the candle, when lit, reveals just how bad things really are.

Again and again the Sermon on the Mount calls and challenges us to a life of radical discipleship. Note: when Jesus says 'Blessed are the . . . . merciful, peacmakers', and so on, he doesn't just mean that they themselves are blessed. He means that the blessing of God's kingdom works precisely through those people into the wider world. That is how God's kingdom comes. That's one thing to hear afresh.

It is faith that looks up at the creator God and knows him to be the God of love. And it is faith that looks out at the world with the longing to bring that love to bear in healing reconciliation, and hope.

Love is not just tolerance. It's not just distant appreciation. It's a warm sense of, 'I am enjoying the fact that you are you.'

I regard this conclusion as coming in the same sort of category, of historical probability so high as to be virtually certain, as the death of Augustus in AD 14 or the fall of Jerusalem in AD 70

As we are set free by that love from our own pride and fear, our own greed and arrogance, so we are free in our turn to be agents of reconciliation and hope, or healing and love.