Sometimes a year can seem to stand out for the wrong reasons. It can seem to be filled with more loss and uncertainty than sometimes seems manageable. Our loved ones pass on, taken from us by illnesses or accidents. Families ache from violence caused by those who wrongly believe that a gun is a solution to disagreement. Our communities are made anxious by concerns for jobs and the economy. They worry about the difficult decisions being made whose echoes will be heard in the years ahead. Across the world, we have seen people whose human rights have been denied, whose lives have been ended by a bullet or a bomb. Those who have lost everything, forced into perhaps the largest tide of refugees the world has known.
Yet we here in Anguilla are blessed. We are blessed because everyone in Anguilla has the freedom to express political and religious views without fear of persecution. Because talent is cheered all the way to international recognition. Because in song, and stories, and traditions and friendships the uniqueness of this beautiful island – and the resilience of its people – is celebrated through hundreds of words, and countless actions.
We are blessed too because to have grief, is to have loved. To lose is to have cared. To disagree about options and choices, is to have belief in the future. To worry is to have compassion. And to cry for another’s pain is to have empathy and walk alongside them.
We are blessed also because, as the Christmas story reminds us, we are loved. Loved enough that a small child in a stable comes to teach mankind how to be compassionate, how to treat one another, how to care for the world, and how to love. And he went on teaching us this message by his own life, sufferings, and death. Miraculously, hope is called out of us as we celebrate and contemplate all that Jesus does.
So this is my Christmas hope: that we each learn from the message that Jesus’ birth gives. And as we look to the year ahead, both in our community and across the world, that peace and prosperity prevail.
Christina Scott
(Published without editing by The Anguillian newspaper.)
