Happy Christmas

Here's wishing you a very Happy Christmas!

I hope your day is blessed with joy and peace.

We have just enjoyed a lovely Christmas lunch with my wife's family and are eagerly awaiting our presents! As we attend church in the morning, we always wait until the afternoon before opening presents.

This morning I had the great privilege of preaching at the morning service. As it was a family oriented service, I asked what made Christmas special for the people there. As you might expect top of the list were presents, food, family and the Doctor Who Christmas Special. I asked the children why we celebrated Christmas this way and it wasn't long before one of them told me it was Jesus' birthday. So I asked them why we celebrated Jesus birthday at all, after all - do we celebrate other people's birthdays? I asked one of the children (about six years old) whether his mum and dad put up decorations to celebrate my birthday. He thought for a moment. "Sometimes" he said!
After we had established that we don't actually celebrate other people's birthdays, not even the vicar's or the Queen's, we thought about what was special about Jesus.
We celebrate because in Jesus God himself came down to live amongst us. Why? Because God loves us. We might expect that if God came to earth he would be angry - after all the reason he had to come at all was because we had messed up so badly, we had rejected God, turned away from him and failed to be everything he created us to be. But no! God came to be one of us, so that we might be one with him. He came to show us what love is, so that we might show love to one another. And that is the real meaning of Christmas.

Have a fantastic Christmas everyone - love and be loved this day. xxx