Hello Tablers! Welcome to Christmastide.I don’t know if you have ever been either in or near a car crash, but having had both experiences one of the things that I have noted is that strange moment of silence that follows the racket of the collision itself.

I sometimes feel like this week (the week after Christmas) in our culture is a bit like that moment after the car crash. There has been the uproar and havoc of the “holiday”, with all the build up and hype, the crunch of the eve and day of Christmas, and then…a strange sort of silence about all the things that we were making so much racket about just the day before.

Now before you decide categorically (and in advance) that this would be a good Sunday to pull the covers up to your chin and take a pass, I want to suggest that for all the macabre images that story conjurs, it also contains an important and even liberating message about living in a morally complex world – a message that I think is essential in helping us all to not give up on our search for a good God in a world where there is also great suffering.