A HANDFUL of sentences provide the focus for comment today, and we make no apologies if they fuel something akin to a Sunday sermon.

Droitwich mum Nicky Taylor today explains the heartache of spending the coming days with only two of her five children.

"Christmas is very hard," she says of the three boys who, she believes, are with their father in Pakistan. "I miss them terribly."

For Paul Howdle, the ever-present thought is that, "like Children in Need", the plight of the homeless - like him - will be forgotten before the turkey's down to the bone.

For Mary Dhonau, the troubles have been more high-profile, if no less hard to bear. Like may families living beside the Severn, the scars of the floods will take years to heal.

At the height of those floods, most of us heard people lamenting that the ever-rising tide had disrupted a favourite routine. If we're completely honest, most of us succumbed to the same misguided self-pity too. What an appallingly shallow set of values.

How many of us have ever gone to bed worried sick about our house being in one piece the next day?

How many of us have climbed out of bed in the morning, wondering where our loved ones are?

How many will have woken, uncertain of where we'll sleep the next night, with no better idea when the sun goes down again, and with no home to call our own, or no family to share it?

That's why, on a weekend when we'd have preferred to report nothing but positive news, we've taken a little space and asked you to spare and share a thought for those whose Christmases will lack the traditional joys and surprises.

In return, perhaps without knowing it, the people whose stories have helped to echo the call have each provided the rest of us with a gift of their own - the gift of hope.

From her turmoil, Nicky Taylor lives "in the hope that, one day, I'll have my family back".

Paul Howdle looks at the older men at St Paul's Hostel and doesn't want to end up like them: "I've been through a bad patch, like most people have, but I'll get over it."

And Mary Dhonau is determined that, in April, the family will have a big party "when everything's back to normal".

A Happy Christmas to them all.