However there is good news! This Christmas Eve it is reported that "British researchers have devised what they say is a guaranteed method of pulling crackers, to avoid disappoint at the dinner table this Christmas. Diners are guaranteed success if they follow the formula O=11xC/L+5xQ which is based on the angle, grip and quality of the cracker". I won't explain what O C/L and Q stand for. I am just going to enjoy the food and the company and if some else gets the present in the cracker, good for them!
Do we go a bit overboard at Christmas? Having grown up and lived in the UK, it is part of our culture. I was talking to a lady who has lived in Asia for 20 years, and enjoyed a different culture. For her, Christmas was a time for sharing the good news about Jesus Christ - free from the commercial pressures of the West.
I enjoy much of Christmas, the getting together of family and friends, the food, the colour and bright lights. But present giving gets a bit much. What do you give people who have everything they need? Not that this applies to the younger members! Many people do give to charities at Christmas, realising that there are people who most certainly don't have everything they need.
Research for Superdrug reveals that "The average family of four will spend a whopping £1,695 on Christmas this year. Presents alone will cost a total of £606 while a staggering £321 will be spent on food and drinks.
Phew! Fortunately our spending is nowhere near the average family. But I can't help thinking of what could be done with £1,700 in Sierra Leone, and in many other places too. However, as St. Paul reminds us, "If I give all I possess to the poor.....but have not love, I gain nothing". Men and women need more than money, we all need to know the depth of the love of God to be fully human and to become children of God. That is why a baby came at Christmas. Jesus came to show us the love and power of God - in a person.
John Wesley, the 18th century evangelist and Father of Methodism, taught that people could be perfected in love towards God and their fellow men in this life through their faith in Jesus. Far from producing an inward looking group of people in a "holy huddle", this exploded into a movement that produced missionaries, schools, orphanages, the first trade unions and support for many social campaigns, such as the ending of the slave trade.
So that is what Christmas is about to me. A man coming to show us God, so that we might be changed and into what? To "reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the full measure of the fulness of Christ". (Eph.4.13). What a calling! It's a big one.
Think of it in terms that Nelson Mandela used in his inauguration speech. "Your playing small doesn't serve the world. There's nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won't feel insecure around you. Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves: Who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you NOT to be?" We are called to be the city set on a hill that all can see!
No comments:
Post a Comment