Believe me... we're here for all of you

THERE’S something deep in our hearts that longs for peace at Christmas – that picture-perfect Yuletide of countless advertising campaigns, reflecting the line in Silent Night:

- Right Rev Jill Duff

“All is calm, All is bright.” This year, Christmas festivities have been under threat of cancellation for months due to the ongoing pandemic.

Even in ordinary times, many of our Christmas Day stresses remind us we haven’t yet arrived at the perfect day of those rose-tinted adverts.

What do we long for deep in our hearts? I think many of us are waiting for that day when, as the song says, somewhere over the rainbow all the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.

Around Christmastime nine years ago, I went to see my mum, who was in a hospice in Manchester with cancer. When I arrived, she said: “You’ve got to come along the corridor with me to the Chapel.”

I was very surprised. My mum wasn’t religious so it wasn’t the sort of thing she would normally say.

When we got to the Chapel she said: “I was here last night, asking God to make my back better.” (She’d had a bad back with the cancer.)

Then came the words I’ll never forget as she added: “It was like Jesus was here and he was telling me it was going to be OK.

“That’s what you’ve been trying to tell me all these years, isn’t it?”

We were a family of worriers and, while I don’t know what happened to my mum that night, I do know she approached her death four months later – on Easter Day – with an incredible sense of peace.