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Good morning. Waking up this morning in the northern hemisphere means waking up after the longest night of the year. From today, the days are lighter and longer. Imperceptibly at first of course, but inexorably, assuredly, the sun returns from today to, as the ancient Advent prayer goes, dispel the lingering shadows of night. As the year draws to a close, reflection on the last 12 months begins too: and for one English dictionary, the word of 2022, is striking. It is permacrisis. The state we are in: permacrisis. A prolonged period of instability and insecurity resulting from a series of catastrophic events. While this might be a relatively new state of affairs for some, much of the world’s population lives precariously all the time. Permacrisis is a way of life if your income is unstable, your borders insecure, if there’s no cushion, nest egg or savings account to protect you from economic shock. And as a priest, as a Christian, living through such a permacrisis as this, I might reach for the certainty that I really want faith to provide. The house built on rock as the story Jesus told, rather than the house built on sand that got blown away by the storm. But if I’m looking for glib answers, for conclusions, rock-like logic or certainties in a life of faith, I’m looking in the wrong place. The festival we’re about to celebrate gives us the Christmas story of precisely this: the arrival of God into a permacrisis all of its own: a militarised society, a family fleeing persecution, a dirty outhouse and a precarious birth. In Christian theology and practice then, I’m taught to look not for iron-clad certainties about what will happen next. But rather, to ask for the resources, (which turn out to be mostly, love), to live more honestly with the questions. Scientists often say that the more they know, the more they realise they don’t know. In a situation of prolonged instability, this becomes a shared experience across the whole of society, when it feels as if experimenting has become a way of life. In an unstable and volatile world, it’s our ability to live with the questions, not search for false certainties that will get us through. And for Christians, that means that God is with humanity. Intertwined in all the mess and unsteadiness: in the vulnerability of a baby and… with the light and power of the sun.