Let us do a bit of time travelling back across the seas and continents and across some 2000 years to that first Christmas in a small town in Judea called Bethlehem.
There on a bed of straws staring back at the stares of farm animals silenced by wonder, we find the baby whose birth has divided the human calendar into two – that before and that after his birth.
The simplicity of the message implicit in the humble setting of his birth combines with the powerful impact of his later spoken messages of peace, love and salvation and the humility of his suffering and death that has endured down through the ages to inspire everyone.
The message that comes to us is one of Humility, of Simplicity, of Love and of Hope.
It is that message we must share this season with one and all. And where such messages seem lost by circumstances, let us inspire or give it back where we can.
It is with this spirit that we turn our minds to those who are unable to celebrate for many reasons.
Families in the European country of Ukraine will greet this Christmas with howling missiles, with cries of the injured and wailing air raid and ambulance sirens.
Yet amidst the screaming shells and the burning buildings there are health and rescue workers mingling with combatants, placing their lives at risk in order to rescue those trapped and injured.
Many children in all parts of the world, including in many parts of PNG, will go hungry and thirsty. Somewhere along the way the Salvation Army or Red Cross or a charity organization will bring much needed food, water, or clothing to those children. May be the help arrives late for many, maybe it is not enough, but it is enough to inspire hope that there is always a helping hand out there in this tumultuous world.
In the Carteret of the Autonomous Region of Bougainville and Duke of York islands of East New Britain families are facing rising water levels that are drowning out their homes and gardens.
Those waters will not recede. We have plenty of land throughout PNG. We must relocate our first refugees of climate change.
The scare of Covid-19 has diminished but the danger is ever present.
Rising prices of our goods and services make it difficult to balance daily needs and leave something over for gifts for family and friends. These are evidence of the adverse economic effects of Covid-19 and of the Ukraine war. Yet the government has announced rescue packages in the form of school fee subsidies, payment of school project fees, and taxation relief packages that should ease the pains of many.
Tragedy we will always have but it is the help that is to be found in those dire circumstances that give us hope.
It is hope that drive us on when all seems lost.
There is nothing so important and no job so high that you cannot reach down to lend a helping hand to those most in need.
If there is anything we can do this festive season, let us give each other and especially those most in need, that most wonderful gift of hope, first extended to us by an infant boy whose very birth gave humankind hope.
Christmas 2022, however we celebrate it, must remind us of that HOPE, both as we receive it and in how we give it to others.
Let us remind ourselves that that sun light will always come bursting out of that overcast sky.