Dear Friends, Thank you so much for your Christmas greetings and for your wishes for the New Year.

Dear Friends,

Thank you so much for your Christmas greetings and for your wishes for the New Year. 

Neither Christmas nor the New Year are topics for sermons or songs.  Christmas is a spiritual pilgrimage – through Jesus Christ to God.  It is not the event of yesterday.  It is the event of the present as well as the future. 

I was moved to tears, in fact to anger, having witnessed little Bethlehem besieged with an iron gate – very much like prison gates – blocking access into it.  The only hope was in a star that neither tanks nor fighter planes – nor separation walls, could stop its light from penetrating the darkness that was. 

In my sermon for Christmas I addressed the so called road map, which proves to be a road without a map and a map without a road.  I called on people to seek a different road map: the first condition of which is giving glory to God in the Highest so that peace and joy may prevail in our world. 

Again thank you for your prayers, for your cards and for your continued support.  

May you be richly blessed and continue to be a blessing. 

In Christ,

Bishop Riah Abu El-Assal