View From The Vicarage

Christmas hope – that does not disappoint

A very happy Christmas to you. We look forward with more confidence to a normal festive period this year. Even our family gatherings were threatened just a year ago by Covid so to be planning Carol services, nativity plays and special visits to concerts and the theatre sounds more like normal life.

For many Christmas is a tough time remembering loved ones no longer with us, struggling to make ends meet and to keep themselves warm. Such are the privations of living in the west in one of the most privileged countries in the world.

Can we imagine the thousands of migrants on the road, trying to cross dangerous waterways as they escape terror and look for peace in the west.

What a legacy of charity and welcome we owe to these people who long for just a little of the security and luxury in which we live. Their great hope is to reach safety in the west – it drives them to take often impossible risks and dangers.

Commercially Christmas is ‘make or break’ time for many businesses. As we move from face to face to digital purchasing it provokes fear and uncertainty into the hearts of many who have committed so much of their time and energy into building up a business.

It was into such a fragile and insecure environment that Jesus was born 2,000 years ago.

The expectation of a Messiah had been present for 400 years–but yet nothing had happened. Then a baby was born in a stable to teenage parents who had travelled far to fulfil the requirements of a census and who then before travelling home had had to flee the country because of a terror campaign by the King against young boys newly born.

Fragility and uncertainty abounded at that first Christmas but yet God had his hand on those events and the baby grew up in a good home and then emerged aged 30 as the long awaited Messiah who would bring hope to troubled people and troubled nations.

That was why Paul writing to the young church in Rome could speak of Jesus as a “hope that does not disappoint” (Romans 5:5). The Christian faith does not offer something it cannot deliver on and in fact the only criterion for delivery of hope is a trust in the one who offers it.

It’s a wonderful timeless story repeated every year but especially this year after all the Covid inspired uncertainties of last year.

I do hope you will join us for a carol service which will be held in every church in the Dever valley this Christmas time. Christingles, crib services and Christmas day communions will welcome you – do come.

John Rennie