There can’t be many people who won’t be glad to see the back of 2020!
It’s been a year like no other in living memory. A year that no one could have predicted just how dramatically each of us around the globe would be affected.
Christmas and Christmas celebrations will almost certainly look different from other years, whatever our current situation is with the lockdown. For some, the thought of not having to gather together with family may be a relief but for many having to celebrate Christmas without the normal getting together with family and friends, to share food and festivities, just won’t feel like Christmas.
Yet perhaps like the lockdown, which allowed that global pause for our world to ‘breathe’ again, we can look with fresh eyes at what Christmas really is about. Beyond the tinsel and carols, we see that first Christmas, a young pregnant teenage mother and her husband also wondering what the future held for them and their baby, coming into a world living under Roman occupation. In an obscure little village in the Middle East, a vulnerable baby was born who would change our world forever – just as this pandemic which started thousands of miles away has changed the entire world.
What was it, that made shepherds (those from the lowest strata of society) and the wise men (those of wealth, knowledge and status), both come to see and be transformed, as they knelt to worship and give thanks for this newborn baby King, laid in the ‘throne’ of an animal’s feeding trough?
Any newborn baby is something to celebrate and transforms the lives of every parent and family, but this baby held the promise of hope – the message and joy of Christmas. The Jewish people had been waiting for over 400 years for the promised Messiah to liberate them from oppression, to set up a glorious new kingdom and be their King. But this baby was God’s way of sharing his love for the whole world - whatever our colour, creed, or status. Becoming one of us, was God’s greatest gift to his creation and this Christmas, we are invited afresh – still in the midst of a global pandemic - to receive this gift. A gift which does not change our circumstances, but brings light into the darkness, hope out of despair and peace that goes beyond our worldly understanding. There is a purpose in life for each of us. To be known and loved. To be set free to live life in all its fulness as we were designed and created to be and above all to know that God is with us.
However different or challenging this Christmas may be, may we know that God is ‘with us’. This is the heart of the Christmas message. Just as the symbol of the rainbow, which has become the symbol of this year, reminds us that there is hope, whatever this year has brought and whatever is to come.
“Look! The virgin will conceive a child! She will give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel, which means ‘God is with us.’”
[Matthew 1:23]
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