Pastoral Letter December 2019
There is a song played every year at Christmas that is blasted out in the shops and on the telly, and it goes, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year!”.
Children would agree with that I am sure, but sadly something of the wonder and joy of Christmas has been lost in our culture and society as the story of Christ’s birth has been side lined from Christmas, and it has become much more secularised and consumer driven. So much so that many people’s understanding of Jesus is that he was just a good man, and many folk think he was just a great teacher and philosopher, and they will try to live their lives by the values he taught, but as great as these understandings about
Jesus are, they miss the point of Jesus’ life.
The point of Jesus’ life was to show us the way back to God. Jesus is much more than just a good man or a great teacher, because He actually claimed to be God’s son, and claimed that he had been sent to the world to be our Saviour because God loves us. We live in such a complex world, with great good demonstrated by people, but also great evil by others. Because of the evil in the world many folk cannot bring themselves to believe that there is a God who loves His creation, and who loves the people of the world. Many folk would say if God is so good and loving…why doesn’t he do something?
2000 years ago in Bethlehem God did do something, He sent his one and only son Jesus to show us the way to live, and the way back to Gods heart. And the world would be a very different place if everyone tried to live how Jesus taught us to.
Every Christmas we hear the story of Jesus’s birth, and for many it is heard only as folk lore or myth, or worse still as a fairy-tale. But none the less every year among the tinsel and glitter of the celebrations, the baby of Bethlehem appears in our Carol services, in our children’s School Nativity plays, and is proclaimed from every Church in the land. In reality we can only imagine what it might have been like that 1st Christmas among the dusty busy streets of Bethlehem. But if you will allow yourself to believe the good news the Angels and Shepherds proclaimed, if you will open your heart and mind to God, and to see Jesus as more than just a good man or great teacher, then Christmas is indeed the most wonderful time of the year. It is wonderful because Jesus is more than that, He is the light of the world, the hope of the nations, God’s very own son and our Saviour. Have a very blessed, peaceful and joyful Christmas,
with love Rev Sue.
John 1:14 Contemporary English Version (CEV) “The Word became a human being and lived here with us. We saw his true glory, the glory of the only Son of the Father. From him all the kindness and all the truth of God have come down to us.”
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