Christmas Daze

Have you got everything? The turkey, the stuffing, the crackers, the wine, the pressies. The right turkey, the right stuffing, the right wine (red, rose, white?), the right pressies? It's Christmas Day and I'm all in a daze! I'm one cracker short of a Christmas! I'd got four, we've got five coming for Christmas dinner! No, I don't want a cream cracker! Jacob is welcome to keep them! Julie has got a spare cracker! Thank-you Julie! Have I got everything? When all is said and done, I have. How much do I really need to enjoy Christmas? I thank God so much, for so much. Have I got the Christ in Christmas? In CHRISTmas? O come, O come Immanuel ('God with us')...into all of our Christmas Days.

Alpha Adventure

Ten people braved the elements to attend the Alpha course sessions on the Holy Spirit at Holy Trinity Brompton yesterday. At the end of the day I was thinking of doing a blog with the title 'Alpha Adventure' to link in with Advent - get it, Advent-ure, terrible pun, I know, when the speaker started to talk about what an adventure the Christian journey is! Advent means arrival. At Christmas we think of the coming Christ in His birth. Jesus came that we may start again in life. To find the meaning of life. A new life. A new journey. As the Methodist hymnwriter Charles Wesley puts it in his carol 'Hark the herald' : " Mild He lays His glory by, born that man no more may die, born to raise the sons of earth, born to give them second birth." Jesus in the Bible is called 'the Alpha and the Omega' - the first and last letters of the Greek alphabet, representing that Jesus is the First and the Last, the Beginning and the End. Many people have received Christ - been born again - through the Christmas Advent and the Alpha course to name just two ways. If you haven't started a Christian journey - you don't know what you are missing! Wise men still seek Jesus! And so do wise women!

Do We Know It's Christmas?

"It's Christmastime, there's no need to be afraid. At Christmas time we let in light and we banish shade..." These are the opening lines of the Band Aid song 'Do They Know It's Christmas?'   The question I ask is : Do we know it's Christmas? What is Christmas? For many it is 'Winterval' - an interval between one year and the next. A time to eat, drink, and be merry. For some, the Christ is removed from 'Christmas' and replaced by 'X' to read 'Xmas' : the 'X' standing for whatever the 'X' factor is that lights up the season. At Christmas, Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ - God's Son who came to be the Saviour of the world - and we can personally know Him. The true light that gives light to every person was coming into the world. Do we know it's Christmas? Do you know it's CHRISTmas?