Diocesan News19 Dec 07

Bishop Harold Miller's Christmas Message 2007

Let’s give our children the best gift of all!

The recent Survey of Religious Knowledge in Northern Ireland revealed some very worrying information about how little is known by many younger people about the basics of the Christian faith – even in what is a predominantly Christian province. It would seem that churches, schools and parents need to be much more intentional about conveying at least the facts of the Christian faith to an up and coming generation. Otherwise, our children will lose the story which has been at the heart of our very civilization, which begins each year with the birth of Jesus Christ on Christmas Day.

I think most of us would agree that there is more to being human than simply the things we possess or the bodies we inhabit. And Christmas is the perfect reminder of that. So much of what we and our children are given at Christmas will be discarded or even thrown out over the next few weeks. And so much of the over-consumption of our bodies will do little to make us healthier people.

Yet there is at Christmas-time an instinct to look for that other dimension which makes us fully human –the spiritual dimension. This is the dimension of love and wonder, prayer and praise. Each year more and more people make their way into churches at Christmas, seeking spiritual reality, and re-affirming at least the beginning of the Christian story in the crib of Bethlehem. We instinctively know how important that story is.

But that which is on offer at Christmas is vital all the year round. Whatever other gifts we sacrificially offer our children, we will have sold them short if we do not offer the story which brings them the gift of eternal life. Perhaps over the coming year we in the churches and schools can work together with parents more intentionally than ever to ensure that the children, who are entrusted as a gift of God to us, will get to know and learn the story of the Saviour Jesus Christ –that Good News which has been such a blessing to our community in the past. When we give that gift, we give something lasting, and our children will thank us for it in years to come.