THE HEART OF CHRISTMAS

I really enjoyed wandering around North Springfield last week delivering our church Christmas cards. I’ve never lived anywhere where people celebrate Christmas so enthusiastically. Trees decorated. Lights everywhere. Laurels on doors and signs saying “Santa, stop here.” Everybody looking forward to a really happy time.

 

But then I heard a piece on television which started me thinking. The World’s Longest Car is a Cadillac in California. It is 100 feet long and has 26 wheels – one for every seat. It has video, TVs, quadraphonic hi-fi, six telephones, a satellite dish, cocktail cabinets, a king-size water bed, and a swimming pool with a diving board and a Jacuzzi.  It bends in the middle to go round corners. It cost 2 million dollars and weighs 10 tons. And it comes with its own Tow-Truck. Because this car is so jam packed full of accessories that the one thing it hasn’t got room for is an engine!

 

But is a car isn’t really a car if it hasn’t got an engine? All the optional extras in the world aren’t worth having if the most basic essential is missing! Which makes me think about the way many people celebrate Christmas. 

 

We look forward to the food, the turkey and trimmings and the pudding and the cake, all washed down with plenty of Christmas spirits. We spend so much on the presents and the stockings and the cards and the parties. But you don’t actually need these things to have a happy Christmas. Even Santa and his reindeer, and Christmas trees and fairy lights, and singing carols are only the wrappings, the tinsel, the optional extras of Christmas. We don’t need these things to celebrate, and billions of people around the world do not have them.

 

But there wouldn't be a Christmas without Christ. If that Baby had not been born in that stable in Bethlehem 2000 years ago, we wouldn't have anything to celebrate. Listen to the words the Angel said to Mary, the Mother of Jesus.

 

Luke 1:30 “Do not be afraid, Mary, you have found favor with God. 31 You will be with child and give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus. 32 He will be great and will be called the Son of the Most High. …  “The Holy Spirit will come upon you, and the power of the Most High will overshadow you. So the holy one to be born will be called the Son of God.

 

Jesus was unique, the Son of God, God born as a human being to show us what God is like and to make a way for us to know God again, Jesus the Saviour of the world, Jesus, the reason for the season.

However many accessories you have, a car isn’t really a car without an engine. And Christmas isn’t really Christmas without Jesus Christ. I wish us all a really joyful Christmas. Let’s all remember whose birthday it is.

For more information phone/text:  07963166459
Email: peter@northspringfieldbaptistchurch.org

Havengore, North Springfield CM1 6JP

 

 

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