The prophet of the Lord, Jeremiah, gives false prophets a thorough lambasting. To some, he declares their days will be shortened, to others exile and loss, but to all stern reproof for not speaking in God’s name when claiming they were – “they have spoken in my name lying words that I did not command them.”

Hindsight is so helpful when it comes to prognostication; we can prophesy with unerring accuracy something that has happened. Which is all a way of saying that we aren’t very good at prediction, and maybe a little better at interpretation.

… is my own business. In a sense, this is true, much of the time. But not in the way it is normally appealed to. The idea that private behaviour has no impact on public behaviour is ridiculous; we can’t be two-faced with impunity.

A recent survey by the WHO, in conjunction with the ILO, found a clear link between overwork and premature death. 745,000 in the Western world died of either a heart attack or stroke in the year 2016 due to overworking. I can only imagine this has increased since.

The Cross of Christ has been made many things, but ultimately it is only one thing. To most, it is a finely crafted adornment on a chain, to be hung around our necks; it is romanticised. It has become a symbol of Christianity and its founder – Jesus Christ. It is found on flags – many European countries have it embedded on their national flags. And it is now illegal to wear in places of employment in France, due to its aggressively secularized vision of the state. The Cross is many things.

People are facing off about masks. Every man and his dog (I saw a dog sporting a mask recently) has an opinion. To wear or not to wear, that is the question? Naturally every opinion is scientifically validated, they all insist in contradiction to one another.

We, the human race, have decided it is our destiny, nay, our necessity, to reach for the stars. We are going to populate the Moon, and then, hopefully, Mars. We hope to understand more about our (inter) stellar origins, take our skills and curiosity to far flung worlds, and ease the pressure on Earth’s burgeoning population. All very progressive, and in measure, an exciting prospect.

William Wallace made it all look so straight forward, however, freedom is notoriously difficult to define because it can mean something different in any given situation. To one person it is the right to freedom of speech, to another the right to move and act without unlawful restraint (even here it depends on who is making the laws), and to another the right to be free of oppression and injustice. Whichever way we view it, freedom does have the common thread of not being constrained from the ability to move, act, and speak.

The drinking of wine can, not inevitably though, lead to strange behavior, and equally not drinking wine can lead some to strange conclusions. And I’m not sure which is worst – a headache or forced exegesis? One goes away in the morning but the other stays all day, all life-long. One is certainly regrettable, the other rarely repented from.

By a case for gravity I don’t mean, what goes up must come down. What I refer to is a case for dignity, for solemnity, because it appears that we have all but lost the capacity, or even the desire, to present with some sense of gravity – in our words, and our lives. I apply this to us, to God’s people, because who am I, who are we, to judge the world.

Holiness, without which no one will see God, has become either a despised term or, worse, a forgotten one.

The universe we inhabit is vast and beautiful; it is equally terrifying. We are both captivated by it and captive to it.

Quite a lot of things died in 2020, not the least being the traditional Christmas Card. We sent none and received five, which both surprised me and shouldn’t have surprised me.

I am not sure whether to mourn the loss or think – about time, inevitable, or something else altogether?