Bishop Dave shares a personal reflection for Advent, looking to the birth of Jesus - the light overcoming the darkness - as a promise to us all that there's a future with no more suffering.
My sister has cancer. She was diagnosed quite recently, and it's turned her world upside down. Her husband, her young daughter and the rest of our family are trying to come to terms with the fact that this Christmas and the future suddenly looks very different to how it did just a few weeks ago.
It's made me realise how often I take for granted what the future is gonna hold - how often I assume the future is going to be just like the past. And then it's so painful and disorientating when the future suddenly looks dark, uncertain, and we don't know what to do.
The whole world feels like that at the moment in some ways, doesn't it? With a climate crisis, war, economic uncertainty, difficulties of all kinds pressing in on us. And at times like that, we look to the future, and we think how can we make the future better than the darkened, threatened place that it seems likely to become. And there are all kinds of things that are good and right to do - we find the best medical treatment we can, we raise money, we make meals, we plan nice things to look forward to. But none of them can change what the future holds.
And in fact, as Christians, we need to look backwards, not forwards, to find the source of our hope.
We can look backwards to all the blessings that God has given us, to answered prayer, to times of lightness and hope when we saw the faith so clearly and then we can practice in the dark what we learned to be true in the light. But most of all, we need to look all the way back 2,000 years to the birth of Jesus.
A tiny, fragile baby born unnoticed by almost the whole world, but a birth that changed everything forever. A light - the light, as John's Gospel says, that brings life to all people came into the world, and the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness cannot overcome it.
So as we face a dark and uncertain world, a future full of difficulties, as the days grow shorter and the night seems darker and longer, we look all the way back to Jesus, the light of the world, who entered into this darkness and overcame it with his light; a light that floods us when we trust in him, and that promises us a future that is entirely secure, kept for us, shielded in heaven, and a place where there will be no more cancer, no more suffering, no more pain, no more death, but only light.
Each week of Advent, one of our bishops is sharing their own thoughts for the season. Catch up on Bishop Gavin's and Bishop Mary's now. Bishop Steven's message will be available from Christmas.