We lift our hearts to hear heaven singing. Yet this is a difficult letter to write. Christmas should be a time when we share our joys, when we lift up our hearts together to marvel at Christ's birt the beginning of all our awareness of how God expressed his love to everyone under heaven. Yet, in the very place where it all began, today the signs in the skies are more likely to be the dark shapes of helicopter gunships and the song that is heard is the roar of rockets and the whistle of falling mortars. Death stalks the streets of Jerusalem, Bayt-Jala, Bethlehem, Nazareth, Nablus, Ramallah, Jericho and Gaza.
Death still visits every family in Iraq.
He is seen in the alleyways where the poor gather what meager sustenance they can lay their hands on in Cairo, and he remains a familiar of many in the Sudan and in South Lebanon. And we are burdened with bereavement, anger and deep frustration. And yet and yet we will sing his songs. The peace we have is not given to us by the world. It is the passing-understanding peace given to us by the Prince of Peace whose birth we now celebrate.