The Tribune

By DENISE MAYCOCK

Tribune Freeport Reporter

dmaycock@tribunemedia.net

ASSISTANT Commissioner of Police Theophilus Cunningham turned the switch to light the Christmas Tree at the Royal Bahamas Police Force’s annual Christmas Tree Lighting on Friday at the Gerald Bartlett Police Headquarters in Freeport.

Attending the ceremony were Senior Justice Estelle Gray-Evans, Supreme Court Justice Petra Hanna-Adderley, her husband, Neville Adderley, and magistrates, including retired Magistrate Rengin Johnson.

Police officers and their families also attended. Santa Claus came through on a truck wishing everyone a Merry Christmas. And Christmas presents were presented to the children.

This year’s theme was “Celebrating the Gift of Peace & Hope”.

The Police Pop Band played Christmas songs, and Corporal 3492 Shayan Dean sang popular songs, such as Gee Whiz It’s Christmas. Athea Delva, a fifth-grade student of Hugh Campbell Primary, read the Scripture reading of Luke2:7-20. And a band selection was performed by the Tabernacle Academy Band.

ACP Theophilus Cunningham thanked everyone for coming out and celebrating with them the birth of Jesus, whose message was peace and love to all mankind. “Today, we gathered in the spirit of love for this tree-light ceremony.”

Delivering words of inspiration this year was Rev Keith Russell, who called on Bahamians to make room for Christ Jesus, who came to bring peace and hope to the world.

The pastor indicated that it appears that people have forgotten the reason for Christmas.

“As we mark the sacred occasion with the lighting of a tree, I do not see a nativity scene nowhere in sight - no Jesus, no Mary, not even a representation of Joseph. To the keen observer, it would appear that 2,000 years plus, we still have no room for them.”

“Make room this Christmas for Christ… in the midst of your merriment. Christmas is His birthday – make room for Him at his own celebration,” he said.

Drawing comparison to what Mary and Joseph experienced when the Innkeeper who told them there was no room at the inn for them, Rev Russell asked: “What kind of inns are we keeping? What kind of inns are we constructing?”

He noted that the collective pronoun ‘them’, sometimes excludes. If the church of Jesus Christ is indeed a holy or sacred Inn. How should it look on the inside? Should it have people that only look like us, speak like us, people from our socio-economic level? Should we exclude people from the inn because of their sexuality? Should we exclude people because of their ethnicity?

Rev Russell said where there is no justice, there would be no peace.

“If the world in which we live was an inn, how should it look? Do we create, develop, or keep an inn where women are discarded and bruised, and battered and could hardly get any justice from the court system just because they have become ‘them’?

“Maybe that is why a four-year-old can show up consistently with bruises and be hungry, and nobody seems to want to do anything... because after, all she is just one of them.

“Maybe that is why a woman can be beaten, stabbed, and run over by a vehicle in a crowded neighbourhood, but nobody steps in to stop the mayhem because she was just one of them.”

Rev Russell said Christmas is about peace and hope.

“I want to suggest this Christmas we make room for peace. Engage yourself and get involved so that we can have peace and goodwill to all people.”

“We must find room for hope. We have gone through the devastation of Dorian, and we are wrestling with wave after wave of this pandemic.

“People are living on the edge of an abyss. Many are in a state of quiet desperation. We must make room for hope – say an encouraging word to somebody; sit with them a while; give and help them with some of your resources. We must keep hope alive,” he stated.

Rev Russell said that Jesus died for all – not just a select few.

“When we divide people between them and them, they make no space for love or compassion. God has an Inn that has all kinds of people in it,’ he said.