Jesus Course

I like to do most of my Christmas shopping on the Internet. It’s easy and convenient and I can find lots of things that you just can’t get on the high street. However I am then dependent on deliveries – not so good. But now it’s too late to order anything more.

Mary and Joseph would have taken about three days to get the Bethlehem. Setting aside the fact that Jesus was not actually born on Dec 25th, by now (e.g. two days to go till Christmas) things were well under way. They would have been a day into the journey. We don’t know where they stayed on the way. They might have found somewhere with friends or perhaps slept in the open air.

After all that planning it was now just two days away from the birth of Jesus. What must things have been like in heaven at this point? My children are having trouble sleeping with only two days to go and that just over a few toys. What must things have been like as the great event was about to take place.

I don’t think God ever leaves anything to the last minute but no doubt there were still things to get right.

I guess most of us are pretty busy about now. Some of those who are still working will be stopping off at the shops on the way home or at least spending some time thinking about anything they might have forgotten. By now though some of those things will be too late.

But there is one thing that is never too late when it comes to Christmas and that is thinking about the message of Christmas. God so loved the world that he sent His only Son to save it.

In all the busyness of the season don’t forget to give a thought to Jesus. Why not start a new tradition on Christmas day – perhaps you could light a candle or say a prayer at dinner time or something. Just remember who Christmas day is about.

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Not long to go now to the great day! Children are getting excited (as are parents and grandparents) about the new things they will enjoy on Christmas morning. This always makes me think about how God must have been feeling that first Christmas day.

Of course being God He would have known that everything would be fine but after all that planning and getting ready the great day was nearly here.

But what kind of day had he planned?

We are getting the party food in, wrapping the presents, going to Carol services (about 55% of us do apparently), decorating our houses.

Yet God’s plan involved getting the expectant couple to a small town called Bethlehem and making sure there was not any guests rooms available for them to stay in. We might assume from this that God has no plan and that God doesn’t really care and yet this is so far from the truth. It is wonderful that God allowed His son to be born in a stable. He didn’t even have a bed to sleep in. Wonderful because as an ordinary person from a working class background I know that God is just like me, one of us. Jesus could have been born anywhere but God chose to show us how he is just like one of us.

However God couldn’t resist a bit of something special and so he sends his angels to announce the birth. Not to Kings but to people just like us – shepherds. In truth they were some of the lowest members of society at the time.

There is then some wise men (not called Kings in the Bible) who follow a star to find Jesus. It’s good to know the wise men know where the answers are to be found.

Jesus was an ordinary bloke. Not some distant figure but one of us.

What a plan – thank you God.

Thoughts Christmas, Jesus

There is an advertising campaign run by atheists claiming that there is “probably no god” in the U.K. at the moment. I haven’t seen them myself but I believe that they exist.

Perhaps that is the nub of my problem. I can believe things without having to see them. Like I believe Australia and the Antarctic and India and Mount Everest all exist even though I have never seen them.

It seems to me that we have got so hung up on philosophy (and I like reading philosophy by the way) and the meaning of words and what truth is that we have missed out on some basic parts of life and how we actually know that something is true.

For instance it is possible to make an argument about colour and that we can’t really know that what one person sees as a colour is actually what another person sees. My blue may be red to you. We see the same thing, the same wavelengths etc but how do we know that we see the same colour?

It’s thinking like this that leads some to conclude that there is no god. If we can’t be certain about anything then we have to doubt everything and if we doubt everythng then we have to doubt that god exists, etc.

All very boring I know.

And yet I can turn to my youngest son and point out the beauty of a rainbow or the stars in the night sky and together we enjoy the experience. In some way we just know that we are sharing something together and finding pleasure in it. I can have a conversation with my wife and we end up concluding the same thing. I can watch Harry Hill on the T.V. and enjoy his humour.

There is a part of us that longs for certainty about everything but sometimes that search for certainty gets in the way of knowing and of truth.

Some scientists have tried to claim that they know the only and whole truth and yet ultimately what they claim is based on probabilities only. Science only works if the universe works to a pattern or rules but perhaps we have just made those rules up and in fact the universe is completely random. It is possible for people to see patterns where none exist.

In the end everything we know can only be known by faith.

So then we come back to the existence of god. “Probably”, injects an element of doubt but that doubt works both ways. To say there is probably no god is to say that there might be. If there is even a small chance that god exists then we need to be living as if god does exist. We should also be looking out for the evidence.

Of course I believe that the evidence for the existence of God is overwhelming and so it only takes a little faith on my part to believe in God. After concluding that God does exist I felt a great release and sense of peace about things. Since that time I have even met God, felt his presence. I could now no more deny the existence of God than I could deny the existence of my wife.

Philosophically I can only say God probably exists but in my heart I know He does. Philosophy is great fun but it’s rubbish for working life out.

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The vatican recently commented on the supposed quote from John Lennon when he claimed that the Beatles were bigger than Jesus. Well to be fair to Lennon he didn’t actually say that the beatles were better or bigger than Jesus but just that they had a bigger influence on teenagers in the U.K. at the time, and he was probably right.

After 40 years I guess we ought to take stock and see if it is still true.

In the U.K. maybe the beatles are still big but there are plenty of young people who know nothing about them or who have never listened to their music. In certain generations, however, there are probably more people who listen to the beatles than who pick up a bible to read.

However more people will listen to modern popular music today than will go into a church so perhaps the situation is even more stark today than it was then.

Of course worldwide the Christian Church is still growing fast and shows no signs of dissapearing. The only place we see a real decline is in western europe. Are europeans just not interested or perhaps it is rebellion against the way the church in western europe had behaved in the past. However recent surveys suggest that people are as interested in Jesus as they ever were.

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One of the most challenging things that Jesus said to his disciples was to ask them the question:

“Who do you say I am?”

It’s a question that we all have to answer at some point or another. Many other people have tried to answer this question and some will put words into your mouth as to what they think you should say. I hope that you will consider the evidence and come to your own conclusions.

Thoughts Jesus

We have just got the first stage of the new Jesus Course completed and hope that anyone visiting from now on will be able to get stuck in to the course.

Please keep an eye on this blog to find out what the latest developments and news is for the site.

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