Home for the Holidays

There’s something that feels unusual about not being home with family at Christmas. It’s rather interesting when you think about it. Most people plan to be any place but home during other major holiday time. People go South during March Break, down East or out West during summer holidays, of course to the cottage anytime between the May Long Weekend and Thanksgiving, and for something a little more exotic, possibly Europe or South America for a post high-school fling with a couple of close friends. But Christmas is different. People fly across the country or drive half the night through snowstorms to be home with family for Christmas.

It’s all rather ironic when you read the account of the Christmas story in the Bible, because what you find when you read the story carefully is that no one was home on the first Christmas. Mary and Joseph weren’t home. Their home was Nazareth and they found themselves in Bethlehem. The shepherds weren’t home. They had to work that night out in the fields. The Wise Men from the East weren’t home. They had traveled a great distance. And in a very real way, Jesus was very far from home. The Bible reminds us that Jesus voluntarily left the security and splendor of his home in heaven in order to carry out God’s will here on earth. So you see, Jesus was a long way from home too.
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Posted in Sermon

The Story Behind the Story

If someone was to write the story of your life, what would they write?
How might they capture, in written word, who you are?
Sure, they could write about the events of your life,
but can events alone convey who you really are as a person?
How does one describe the essence of another person’s being?
Is it even possible to do so?

For Christians around the world, the focus of the Christmas season
is still a “babe wrapped in swaddling cloths and lying in a manger.”
But how should we interpret the accounts of Jesus’ birth
as recorded in the gospels of Matthew and Luke?
Were the gospel writers simply recording factual details
surrounding the circumstances of Jesus’ birth in Bethlehem ?
Or were they somehow trying to convey through their writings,
through the stories of angels and stars and shepherds and Magi,
the essence of who this baby really was - the Messiah –
who would one day grow up to be the Saviour of the world.

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Posted in Sermon