This New Year of Grace
“Christmas is coming and the goose is getting fat - who’ll put a penny in the old man’s hat?” An old song many may have sung a few weeks ago- but now it has passed.
What did this last Christmas hold for you? Was it all about parties, eating, drinking, presents, stress, rushing around, headaches, hangovers, regrets and the ever present fear of the credit card statement arriving afterwards to take the gloss of it all?
After the hangovers, extra pounds out on, excesses indulged etc which have probably left some taste of regret…the question arises - Was it truly jolly? The truth for many, waking up to large credit card balances and the sense that somewhere they may have made a fool of themselves leaves the answer to that in doubt. But then the first Christmas wasn’t a jolly affair was it? Certainly not to the poverty stricken parents of Jesus Christ.
A poor man with a pregnant wife in a crowded town with all the accommodation taken - not exactly an experience they would want to revisit.
No Christmas trees there….no Christmas X Factor to watch…no Christmas Celebrity this or that, no high Eastenders drama to ‘drool’ over, no worries about where all the relatives were going to sit when they came round for the turkey dinner they couldn’t afford.
No, that first Christmas bore no resemblance to the monster we have created. That Christmas was all about God responding to the deepest need of mankind and sending light into this dark world.
But with our pseudo paganistic approach to the memory of The Holy Son of God coming into the world for the salvation of the world we have opted to take the world into an even darker abyss.
Then, we get upset because other religions rant and get offended by the nature of our festivities. But do we ever seriously stand back and consider them ourselves? Do we ever ask ourselves where on earth we got the idea that Christmas is about children? When what it was all about is the sinfulness of mankind leaving God, in His love and mercy, no other alternative but to despatch His Son to pay the penalty for a mankind that would one day so distort and misrepresent this major event in the history of man as to make it a sentimental lip service to the greatest sacrifice ever made.
Many relatives will have been mourning and indeed questioning this past Christmas because their sons, daughters, husbands, nephews, boy friends, fiancés will have been sacrificed in a war to protect the world against human terror. Whilst tragically the far greater danger to mankind - personal sin- goes unaddressed in the hearts of most.
History will tell if the war in Afghanistan is justified or indeed effective. Many families will never feel it is and this past Christmas will have brought the deepest of human loss and pain to them when they sat together to comfort one another and ask was it worth it…could it ever be worth it…particularly when insensitive individuals more in love with their own political agenda and bias rant and rage over the validity of it all- in front, and in the hearing of grieving folks who may well agree with them - but are much poorer for their loss?
It is always a glaring hypocrisy that a nation which slaughters 200,000 unborn babies a year, mostly for convenience, without so much as a whimper of conscience, is prepared to demonstrate against young men who simply obey orders and are despatched to fight against what is perceived as a major threat to Western security. Many would be young men who would have been called upon maybe sometime in the future have been despatched already, before birth, to the rubbish bin labelled “Inconvenient to our New Enlightened Society”…which to many , it appears, isn’t worth fighting for anyway.
God’s Son was graciously sent on a mission to this earth as a necessary sacrifice for the sake of all mankind…only to be rejected by the vast majority of mankind. Our Father God is more than justified to sit and ask - was it worth it?
You may not think it was but God does…Jesus Christ thinks it was…and if He had to do it again - He would.
You see God’s ways aren’t our ways and neither are our thoughts His thoughts. That first Christmas so long ago was, in a sense, all about you. Because, so great is God’s love for you, if you had been the only one in need of saving from a dark and horrific eternity that first Christmas would not have been cancelled. That poor man and his pregnant wife would still have travelled to Bethlehem to fulfil their obligations to Rome and to the purposes of God.
That baby born would still have been born…would still have been hunted…despised…rejected…vilified…subject to a falsified trial…lashed unmercifully…and crucified…because He and His Father love you, the one they created to share eternity with them.
Can you keep your heart closed to that kind of love…If so then surely the question to ask yourself is- where was your Christmas wish list lacking?
Christmas was about Jesus Christ coming to this sinful world …to offer His salvation to you. Can you remain disinterested about that?
You may have missed the true relevance of Christmas at the time but this New Year is not about getting the best bargain you can from the High street but to make sure you do not receive the gift of grace- which this year is to you - in vain and see it as a glorious opportunity to reconsider your life and your position before God.
