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Viewpoint from Envoy Ali James 13/12/2024
 Envoy Ali James
Corps Officer, Great Yarmouth Salvation Army
As we hurtle headlong through this season of Advent towards its neighbouring (and hopefully calmer) season of Christmas, I wonder what it might be that you want from ‘The Holidays’ this year? As the world drags itself back still limping into training, trying to attain the efficacy of pre-COVID times, there is more and more frequent need to stop for a breather and replenish our reserves of resilience to cope with whatever other ‘biggies’ life wants to throw our way
We can be forgiven for wanting to get away from it all. And when we do so, we hanker after those places of outstanding natural beauty… that in-built homing of the soul to ‘Eden’, the place of our first creation where humans were able to live fully in the presence of God. In the stories of the season, we again find our good old human selves fully in his presence, this time in the form of this ‘helpless babe’. In the form of Jesus, God becomes a real tangible personable human being to ease the path to us coming back into relationship with him. After all, it’s other humans that we know how to relate to best
 In the times before Jesus, the presence of God lived with his people first in the Tabernacle as they roamed the desert and then, when they came to a place of more permanence, in the Temple at Jerusalem. And for us now living in the era ‘after Jesus’, we are told that we are to be his living temples … the place of God’s presence, … he comes to live in us.
I have two prayers for you this Christmas. Firstly, living as we do in an area of such outstanding natural beauty, I pray that you get that space and time alone out in nature for a vital breather. As Dr Michael Mosley (God rest his soul) reminded us, green spaces are so very good for the soul, …restorative (no surprise there then)
And secondly, I pray that during your down-time you can visualise yourself taking Jesus into your heart and forming a close-bond friendship with him. You know the kind, where you yearn for each next conversation, watch avidly his every expression, and he yours, and where you feel utterly at ease and accepted. Would you know Jesus, God in person, with you this season. Merry Christmas
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