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Ordinary objects can be transformed and transfigured by light. I pondered this, with a smile, when I caught sight of this bright flash of colour, touching some of the things at the bottom of our stairway.

In December, as one of our services in the run-up to Christmas at Bathurst Uniting, we held a Blue Christmas service. A service for people doing it tough at a time of year which is otherwise so relentlessly jolly. For people grieving the loss of a loved one; facing an empty chair at the Christmas table; stressed or distressed by having to put on a ‘happy face’ for the holidays – and frankly, just not up to singing ‘Joy to the World!’ one more time… At our Blue Christmas service, we prayed together, and sat together, and wept together. We acknowledged that the story of the birth of Christ has its dark places, as well as its light ones: places of fear and loss, disruption and danger. We acknowledged that at the heart of the Christmas story is not an escape from this world, in all its pain and struggle, its questions and cries – but God coming into it. Not a promise that all will be well, but that God will be with us in the midst.

‘They will call him Emmanuel – which means, ‘God with us.’…