Christmas Illumination
The sudden change of expression on my friend’s face convinced me she was, probably for the first time, and despite my stumbling words, hearing and understanding the Christian conviction that in the life of the man Jesus the eternal Creator God was really, astonishingly and wonderfully present among humankind. This is of course what St John meant when (as we hear read on Christmas Eve each year) he wrote: ‘No-one has ever seen God. It is Jesus the only Son of God … who has made him known.’ My friend looked a bit stunned, as well she might.
Christmas trees will by now be lit up in many people’s windows, glittering LED cords will be wrapped around the gutters and downpipes of our homes, and a buzz will be heard in supermarkets announcing (in case we’d not otherwise noticed) the approach of our annual festivities. These customs make young children excited but I doubt if any adult’s breath will be taken away by just the thought or sight of Christmas decorations.
But the birth of Jesus, announced as a simple story with extra-ordinary details – details that for many give it the ‘ring of truth’ (consider the persuasion necessary to get Joseph to go through with marriage to Mary; the sign for shepherds that a child would be found wrapped in cloths, laying in an animal’s food trough) - does retain the capacity to stop people in their tracks. The story takes on a new God-given dimension when we dare to consider that the child inexplicably, but jaw-droppingly and amazingly, was indeed Emmanuel - ‘God with us’.
May God shine into our hearts, illumine our minds, and stop us in our tracks – and so bless us again this Christmas!
The Rev’d Dr Richard Hines
Rural Dean for Wisbech Lynn Marshland