So, less than two weeks until Christmas. I actually found myself this afternoon referring to it as Incarnation-tide because I wanted to keep it in my consciousness that this is the time of year when we remember, but not necessarily when it happened, that 2,000 years ago God became a human being. That he was born in humility and became a refugee before growing up and living in a region that made him an outcast among his own people. He became a political prisoner who was tortured and ultimately brutally executed by an oppressive state before coming back from the dead three days later.

That's why, for me, at this time of year concern for the poor, the disenfranchised, victims of torture, the oppressed are brought into sharper focus.

Ahem, sermon over. (Buy Nothing Christmas)