My family and I visited a Christmas craft fair recently, we do it every year. We go there to buy our tree. Out comes Bing singing "White Christmas" and we are in the zone!
While at the craft fair I came across a poster which read, "If Christmas did not exist it would have to be invented."
For some, Christ is the reason, but for many others He is the excuse. I cannot blame people for wanting to piggyback on one of the two greatest Christian festivals of the year. It has been a difficult year for many families. Jobs have been lost, homes repossessed, unsecured debt hugely increased. Christmas is a timely gift when we can have some respite from the harshest recession in living memory. God bless all those who are struggling.
But I pray the excuse will turn to a reason, because we all need hope beyond ourselves. Hope beyond our own personal predicaments. These are places where the state system can't touch or voluntary organisations get near.
However remarkable we are as human beings, and we are, I believe it is because we were made to be remarkable by a remarkable God. Lest we believe our own press that we are so good that we don't need divine help. That would appear to me to be arrogant and, let's be honest, a bit short-sighted.
I like Dave Hayward's cartoon, because finding space for the son of God is not always convenient, especially when so much of the lives are filled up with worries of work, our children and the future. And that's just us in the church!
More wider, of course, the world struggles to find room to accommodate the coming of salvation. Our spiritual condition just does not get priority. Talk about putting the cart before the donkey.
Yet, somehow Jesus' birth still manages to be celebrated each year. For some, it will be in a grand cathedral in a prominent well-heeled part of a city. For others, it will be in a non-descript business unit on an industrial estate in South-east London. All expressions are loved by God.
For ourselves, it will be in Sudbury Town Hall on Christmas Eve at 7.00 pm.
A Christmas carol written by Christina Rosetti:
Angels and archangel
May have gathered there
Cherubim and seraphim
Throng'd the air
But only his mother
In her maiden bliss
Worshipped the Beloved
With a kiss.
Have a peaceful and joyful Christmas. God bless.
ASD
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