So this is Christmas, and what have you done?<\/i>
\nAnother year over\u2026<\/i><\/p>\n
John Lennon\u2019s song, like all the other seasonal tunes, is regularly played on the radio.\u00a0 But Lennon\u2019s lyric has a little more about it than many of the other offerings (e.g. Roy Wood\u2019s \u201cWhen the snowman brings the snow\u2026\u201d or the children\u2019s favourite \u201cRudolph the red-nosed reindeer\u201d).\u00a0 It actually challenges us directly to take stock of our lives at Christmas time.\u00a0 You won\u2019t be surprised to know I think it\u2019s a good challenge for us to consider.<\/p>\n
But Christmas is too busy for us to think about the events of the year and the emotional impact they\u2019ve had on us, isn\u2019t it?\u00a0 First of all there\u2019s all the shopping to do, all the organising, wrapping, cooking, decorating and hosting.\u00a0 Then, there\u2019s all the clearing up, the falling out, the not-speaking and the thank-God-that\u2019s-all-over-for-another-year-ing.\u00a0 Finally, of course, there\u2019s all the paying back the credit cards\u2026 which, depending on how extravagant we\u2019ve been, may well bring us right back to where we are now!<\/p>\n
The question, \u201cHow are you?\u201d often elicits the response, \u201cFine, thanks \u2026 busy, but fine.\u201d\u00a0 Busy.\u00a0 And the activity of the Christmas season only makes us busier, so stopping to reflect on the emotional journey of the last year is, quite frankly, just one more thing to do for which we do not have the time.\u00a0 And here\u2019s another one\u2026<\/p>\n
What have you done this year by way of pursuing a closer relationship with God?<\/b>\u00a0 (I put that in bold type to make sure you didn\u2019t skip over it in your busy rush!)<\/p>\n
The message of Christmas is clear: God chose to come close to us in Jesus.\u00a0 It\u2019s evidence that he<\/b> is pursuing a closer relationship with all of us<\/b>.\u00a0 The Bible tells us, \u201cThe Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us\u201d (John 1:14), and, \u201cJesus Christ \u2026 in very nature God \u2026 made himself nothing, being made in human likeness, \u2026 humbled himself\u2026\u201d (Philippians 2:6ff).\u00a0 It is these verses (and others like them) which inspired one of the most famous and popular carols; \u201cHark! the Herald Angels Sing\u201d:<\/p>\n
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see!<\/i>
\nHail the incarnate Deity!<\/i>
\nPleased as man with man to dwell,<\/i>
\nJesus, our Immanuel.<\/i><\/p>\n
My point is that if we stop even for a moment to consider just how far he has gone to reach out to us (Immanuel means \u201cGod with us\u201d), it should surely cause us to respond with love and worship.\u00a0 So how do our efforts to reach out to him measure up?<\/p>\n
So this is Christmas, and what have you done…?<\/i>\u00a0 Praise God he still reaches out to us <\/b>despite our laziness and reluctance to honour him!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
So this is Christmas, and what have you done? Another year over\u2026 John Lennon\u2019s song, like all the other seasonal tunes, is regularly played on the radio.\u00a0 But Lennon\u2019s lyric has a little more about it than many of the other offerings (e.g. Roy Wood\u2019s \u201cWhen the snowman brings the snow\u2026\u201d or the children\u2019s favourite […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,18],"tags":[32,21,33,29,50,19,11,28],"class_list":["post-97","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cultural-comment","category-gospel","tag-busyness","tag-christmas","tag-discipleship","tag-freedom","tag-gospel","tag-jesus","tag-living-gods-love","tag-peace"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=97"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":131,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/97\/revisions\/131"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=97"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=97"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/hwwchurch.org.uk\/wordpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=97"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}