This one has to be handed over to Linus and Charlie Brown. Happy Christmas everyone. Remember hope, the wonder of Jesus and that when the wrapping paper has been shredded, the food demolished and the day over that there is still hope in this world, the promised one will come and there will be a day when all our tears will be wiped away and our hearts will know true everlasting joy. As in the Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe Christmas coming marks the beginning of the end to the everlasting winter. We have an end in sight. Spring is coming. Rejoice, Rejoice, Emmanuel has come to us.
Advent 23
So, I know that this advent time most of these posts have followed a similar line, life is hard right now but in the midst of that there are glimmers of hope, Christmas is a bit crap and anticlimatic really but in the midst of that there is real light and truth. Realistic I think, and pretty much the only basis of true joy. The light has come to the darkness and the darkness really doesn’t know what to do with it.
Only in admitting the strange reality that Christmas is can we work through the darkness to find the true source of joy and hope at this time of year. I am glad for this journey, I feel better prepared than ever to face the next few days, I am looking forward to hanging out with my lovely parents and husbandface, I am looking forward to eating lots of food and remembering why on earth we are doing the whole thing, I am looking forward to knowing that life will be ok if we don’t stuff ourselves stupid or buy the whole of the shops come the sales post Christmas Day. I am delighted that there is more to Christmas, that it points us to the wonder of Jesus’ second coming and his leading us to all that is to come in the land where there will be no more shadows.
I accept all of that with abundance. But I thought you should watch this as well. Just because, well, sometimes you have to go along with the whole cheesy Christmas joy thing.
If you haven’t seen Elf yet, go buy it. It might just bring you the joy you are looking for this year 😉
Advent 22
As a child of Christian parents who grew up in the 80s I was inducted in the ways of Garth Hewitt from an early age. My Mum also had the fortune to work for him and, as he went to our church, he was one of the most influential people championing the cause of justice around the world that I can remember as I look back through the years. I think he was one of the people who installed in me an awareness, through his songs and talks, of a world beyond middle class Guildford and I am grateful.
This is a quote from one of his early numbers. Seems pretty apt for this Christmas Eve eve.
“Yet angels tore the sky apart,
A child was born, another start,
A chance for all to regain their heart and soul
A simple birth that let us see, what we’re worth and who to be,
The value of humanity one and all.Our minds are stirred with precious words, so rarely heard
He sings us tunes, that very soon, will heal our wounds.
So bow the knee, you have the choice.
Let the wounded heart rejoice.
Follow where the healing voice will lead”
We are in need of much healing this Christmas time and I long to listen to that voice that will lead us on through the darkness to home.
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Advent 21
There is such ambition that surrounds Christmas Day, such build up, most of the people I know are flapping around like headless chickens, somehow caught up in the desperate attempt to have bought all the food they want by today or tomorrow, knowing that the shelves will soon be bare as we all prepare for A Day Without Shopping on Sunday.
There is a lot of ambition that surrounds the birth of Jesus. Read the first couple of chapters of Luke and see where all the emphasis is. It’s on the prophecies, the preparing, the call on John the Baptist, the wonder of God once more speaking to his people, the hope of the consolation of Israel, the expectation is enormous. The angels announce that the Saviour is born. The Saviour. The one promised over hundreds and hundreds of years is here. Now. Run, get to the manager, adore, worship, wonder.
I’m not sure what the shepherds felt the week after Jesus was born. I’m not sure how Mary and Joseph felt years into Jesus life after he had learnt to walk, talk and generally grew from a baby, into a child, to a man. I’m sure there might have been an element of anti climax. The promised one is here. But we still have to wait. He’s a mere baby, a crying pooing baby. Christmas day will be here soon, but we still have to wait. The promised one is here in the midst of our lives but we still have to wait and watch for his coming again. Anticlimax is good because it reminds us that there is yet more to wait for, yet more to ponder and reveals our thirst for the wonder of what is still to come.
Advent 20
Advent leaves us aching and longing for more. The reality is that in 5 days time we will have a slightly disappointing, possibly stressful day. It’s a day that is built up to for so long that it can’t ever live up to the hype. We’re thrust into family relationships that feel like going back in time or we feel isolated because our family situations are strange and different and then we’re told to be happy and rejoice. It’s a weird day. I get grumpy every Christmas day because it never lives up to the promise. My perspective is all wrong though. I’m expecting a day with no hassle, of getting the perfect presents and having the best experiences with the people I love. Mainly it’s all about me. And because of that perspective everything goes a bit wrong. I forget I still have to love the people in my life, that my sin will get in the way of that and we’ll probably get annoyed with each after our enforced time on the sofa together.
Thankfully Advent raises our gaze higher than the immediate stresses of this life and our struggles within it. Thankfully we look to the first coming so we can long and ache for the second coming, when Jesus returns and makes everything in this broken frustrating world new and shiny. A bit like when Sam wakes up and realises he’s no longer on the slopes of Mt Doom and that Gandalf isn’t dead after all.
But Sam lay back, and started with open mouth, and for a moment, between bewilderment and great joy, he could not answer. At last has gasped: ‘Gandalf! I thought you were dead! But then I thought I was dead myself. Is everything sad going to come untrue? What’s happened to the world?’
‘A great shadow has departed,’ said Gandalf, and then he laughed and the sound was like music, or water in a parched land; and as he listened the thought came to Sam that he had not heard laughter, the pure sound of merriment, for days upon days without count. It fell upon his ears like the echo of all the joys he had ever known. But he himself burst into tears. Then as sweet rain will pass down a wind of spring and the sun will shine out the clearer, his tears ceased, and his laughter welled up, and laughing he sprang from his bed.
‘How do I feel?’ he cried. ‘Well I don’t know how to say it. I feel, I feel’ – he waved his arms in the air – ‘I feel like spring after winter, and sun on the leaves; and like trumpets and harps and all the songs I have ever heard!’
One day the great shadow on this world will depart and the sun will shine out the clearer. That’s the hope that will sustain us through this weird time of Christmas, that’s the hope that will guide us through the year ahead, that’s the hope that will call us on towards our final place of rest.
The Long Walk Home 