Pilgrim Soldier

In the last post I wrote about some of the things we’ve been up to this Christmas! The other thing was on Sunday evening which was our Carol Service. Our normal Sunday night congregation is around a dozen people, but for our carol service we had 33 in the hall. This was wonderful as that is most who have been there since I’ve been at the corps!

This year the Carol Service was quite a traditional affair, with contributions from the band and songsters plus carols and readings. As is normal I did a short talk and it’s that I’d like to share with you!

I’m pretty certain that if you were to ask the majority of adults whether Christmas is about giving or receiving, then the answer that would come back is that it’s about giving.

This is true, but it seems that even giving is becoming detrimental to the Christmas spirit. There are various reasons for this but two stand out. Firstly, for many, it seems that each year they need to out do what they did last year. So the presents they give have to be bigger and better and more expensive than they did last year. What’s worse is that in a generation that seems to have everything available to them a lot of what is bought is simply unnecessary.

The second problem is in many ways a direct result of the first. At a time when the inhabitants of this country spent more than half a billion pounds on credit card last year and when the Citizens Advice Bureau has dealt with 1.7 million debt problems in the last 12 months, the follow up to Christmas this year is not going to be a happy time for many people.

But maybe that’s because the focus has got all screwed up! Maybe Christmas is not actually about giving after all! Maybe Christmas is actually about receiving.

Tonight we’ve sung carols and read parts of the Bible that talk about the arrival of Jesus Christ, the person who Christmas is all about.

You see Christmas is really about receiving the gift that God gave to us just over 2000 years ago. In a secular world it seems that maybe Father Christmas is the central figure of the Christmas story, but it’s not true, because really he’s just another symptom of a consumer led society!

The reality is that Christians believe that we are celebrating that God gave us the greatest gift that could ever be given. The first Christmas present was the best Christmas present ever, God’s own son.

God gave us the gift of Jesus so that he could heal the relationship between himself and us. He gave us Jesus so that the world would become a better place as those who believe in him live a life that reflects the gift.

The real meaning of Christmas is receiving this gift and accepting everything that comes with it!

This Christmas, what will be your response to the gift of that first Christmas?