PRIME Christmas International Email - 2022

It's Christmas and a time for celebration and relaxation. For Christians, it’s the time to remember Jesus’ birth – God coming down to Earth in human form to live among us. I do hope you will have time to celebrate and some time for relaxation over the Christmas period. 

However, I know that for some of you Christmas Day, itself, will be a day of working and caring for others who are suffering. Amid the feasting and celebration, we remain aware of people suffering and some of us may be suffering too, due to the pressures of work or other pressures such as illness, family illness, bereavement or difficult relationships. 

After Jesus’ birth Shepherds rejoiced and Wise Men brought their gifts but Jesus was born in a rustic stable – probably not the romantic environment that appears on Christmas cards! We can forget too that Jesus was born into a suffering world and knew difficulties, right from the time of his birth. Mary and Joseph had had to grapple with the fact that when engaged to Joseph, Mary was chosen by God to conceive Jesus through the Holy Spirit. 

The gospels tell of the difficult journey to Bethlehem, Jesus being born in a stable and then the family becoming refugees in Egypt. Sometimes, the Christmas story seems to gloss over these difficulties and romanticise it all, but we are assured that Jesus understands the sufferings we go through because he has undergone suffering too. The following quotation from the Bible has been important to me this year and I want to share it with you as you may find it helpful as you reflect upon your response to the suffering you see around you. 

 “Praise be to the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, the Father of compassion and the God of all comfort, who comforts us in all our troubles, so that we can comfort those in any trouble with the comfort we ourselves receive from God.” (2 Corinthians 1 v3-4 NIV). 

We give comfort to others through our work, to our patients and, also, to our colleagues as we receive the comfort of God who comforts us. This sums up one aspect of what, as members of PRIME, we are attempting to live out in our own professional lives as we care for Body, Mind and Spirit and, I’m sure, in our personal lives too. I believe that this is important for us all to reflect on and even if you don’t share our Christian faith reflect on how you can receive comfort to be able to comfort others. Let’s use Christmas as a time to receive comfort (not only spiritually, but physically and emotionally too) so that we can comfort others, in trouble. 

I hope that through PRIME we can help “comfort” you in your work life. We aim to encourage you as you seek to minister to the “Whole Person”. 

We are very conscious that we have been less able to engage with you, recently due to the Covid 19 pandemic. However, as things are returning slowly to some sense of normality, we hope you might consider coming to the in-person conference (especially those living and working in UK). The conference will be held in Northampton, from February 22nd to 24th. 

Even if you can’t come, we hope to be able to engage more with you in 2023. If you can think of ways we can do this, do please get in contact with us too through the office admin@prime-international.org or to me david.butler@prime-international.org or any members of the team. May I, on behalf of all the PRIME family, wish you a good Christmas and send very best wishes for 2023 as you work to bring comfort to others who are suffering. 

Dr David Butler 

Chair of PRIME Trustees