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Good morning. The conflict in Gaza may be taking place two and half thousand miles away. But despite that distance, the shockwaves are having a growing impact here in the UK, leading to increasing tensions and divisions in many communities and putting pressure on relationships. We’ve seen an alarming rise in the number of anti-Semitic attacks, for example the graffiti daubed on the Wiener Holocaust library. There has been a sevenfold increase in the number of Islamophobic hate crimes according to the monitoring group Tell MAMA. And here in East Lancashire, years of slow work to build social cohesion are now under threat. Often it is schools that are finding themselves at the centre of community tensions, for example over what it is appropriate for children to wear to school. Headteachers can suddenly find themselves caught up in a global conflict. Some would say that this local impact of a war thousands of miles away is evidence of globalisation and a world that, with instant communication and movement of peoples, can feel ever smaller. But there seems to be a longstanding pattern that what happens in the middle east has international significance. During Advent, Christians across the world recall a whole series of events that took place in that same region two thousand years ago during another period of intense political turmoil. The beginning of that story took place in Nazareth where a young virgin heard God’s call that she had been chosen to be the mother of his Son. The fascinating thing about this famous encounter is the inter-dependency that lies at the heart of it. Mary depended on God to know freedom and salvation. But at the same time, God depended on Mary’s yes. God needed her faithful response. Without Mary’s co-operation, his plan could not work out. It seems to me that something very important is being modelled here. God’s way is not to impose his will but to invite people into mutually dependent , co-operative relationships. And for me that speaks loudly into the current tensions, both here and abroad. Conflicts on international and local planes are so appalling partly because they causes us to forget that, as human beings, we are dependent on each other and something of the beauty of our being is lost when we are without each other. There are of course many in the middle east who know this full well and are standing up bravely for reconciliation. Maybe the day will come when it is their voices that will echo through the miles and model for people here a richer humanity.