NAMES are important – and I am trying to learn a whole lot of them at the moment.

But I have also been thinking about one of the names given to Jesus: Immanuel, as in, “They will call him Immanuel, which means God with us.”

All over the world, there are all sorts of alarming things happening, and at an individual level any of us can be carrying an enormous numbers of pressures: worries about relationships, health, family or a feeling a deep loneliness. Christmas started when Jesus came into a world which was no more peaceful and straightforward than ours is today. Being “God with us” was not something he did from a safe distance.

A survey published last year showed that if Jesus were to be born today, the most likely place would be a shed in the Yorkshire Dales, the most likely wise man would be Professor Brian Cox and the most popular gift for the baby Jesus would be a Chocolate Orange. The spokesperson for the Bible Society, who commissioned the survey, said: “At the heart of Christmas is the message that God cares about the everyday, the ordinary and the seemingly insignificant”, In other words: God with us.

Jesus is described in the Bible as “the image of the invisible God”; “all the fullness of God lives in him in bodily form.” Want to know what God is like? Look at Jesus – at his birth as a baby and then at his life and death, and we begin to see true strength coming through weakness; gaining coming from losing; in short, love conquering all.

RICHARD FRITH Bishop of Hereford