| Monthly Message |
| December |
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The Christmas Effect Does Christmas affect your life in any way? "Of course it does", you say! Preparations, buying and sending and choosing and decorating and eating and drinking and visiting and….of course it affects my life! But is there in your life some lasting, permanent effect? Something traceable, like a silver thread through the next twelve months? The Christmas effect is permanent, established on these four truths about God:
And how does the birth of a human baby in an ordinary moment in history, say all these things? The key is in that word ‘ordinary’. God declares his love and solidarity with ordinary people, living ordinary lives. God’s plan to restore the whole of creation begins by identifying with us in our ordinary, all too human birth. God points to the plight of the poor by placing Jesus among them. Sadly not a place in which the church has often felt at home. Christmas does affect our lives – how could it possibly do otherwise? God is with us in the whole of human experience, not just locked up in our churches waiting for our visits. An all too human figure walks alongside the humble, the wretched, the unworthy, touches the unclean and heals the broken. He is the Christmas effect in action, whose birth we celebrate. Rev John Steele |