How ready for Christmas are you?
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.
