Receiving well

I have been struck afresh this year by the advertisements for Christmas on the radio. Many of them promise that if you use their products or services it will be your best, greatest, most marvellous Christmas ever. Maybe you would like to visit the Ultimate Gift Ideas website.  One advert even promised that if you bought their gold goblets (four for £10) it would make your Christmas table the best ever. Excuse my cynicism.

But this is the problem with all if these advertisements. As the superlatives flourish, their promises inevitably lead to disappointment and cynicism which after all protects us from disappointment. We are all familiar I am sure with Jesus words “It is more blessed to give than to receive” which is a great antidote to both disappointment and cynicism for the focus shifts away from ourselves, our wants, our desires, our needs onto others.

As we give to others we can share in their joy. I love anonymous giving as you get to enjoy others’ pleasure secretly. God, the greatest giver, must have great pleasure in giving not just to his children but everyone.  Of course the best gift God gave us was his Son which is or should be the focus of Christmas.

However I am also struck by the importance of how we receive gifts. Recently I have witnessed gifts that were of huge significance to the giver been treated quite casually by the recipient.  This can be very hurtful.

How must God feel then when his greatest gift, his Son Jesus, is treated casually or ignored by most people?  His sorrow must be deep. God has provided all that man needs to deal with sin and to live a happy, fulfilled and deeply satisfying life. Through Jesus men and women can fulfill their God given destiny. The majority choose to reject this gift.

This Christmas as we receive gifts let’s make sure we receive them all – the big and the small with thankfulness and gratitude. However I want to make sure that this Christmas I take my eyes off the glitter and nonsense that will only disappoint and with a thankful heart place my focus firmly on the greatest gift of all.

Gerard van Honthorst Nativity

God loves the outsiders and misfits

It’s Christmas.  The time when we ponder afresh the wonderful news of God becoming a baby, Immanuel, God with us.  This year I am drawn again and again to the misfits, the outsiders that are an integral part of this incredible story.

Firstly Mary, a completely unknown young lady living in Nazareth, a despised town, called to the greatest honour for a woman – to be the mother of the Son of God.  Joseph, an ordinary carpenter, called to stand with Mary and share in the social disgrace of a child conceived outside of marriage.

The first visitors to the infant Jesus were the social outcasts, the shepherds, those lowest on the ladder. The other significant visitors were the religious outcasts, the Gentiles. The contrast between the rural, coarse, illiterate Jewish shepherds and the highly educated, foreign, exotic Gentiles could not be stronger.   Jesus came for everyone not just the rich, the famous, the respectable or religious people and not just for his people the Jews but for all people.

It is hardly surprising though for the Bible is full of stories of those chosen from the outside to become important players in God’s plan of redemption. Moses was an exiled murderer hiding out in the desert so inadequate and insecure he didn’t think he could do anything for God. He certainly didn’t want to go and talk to Pharaoh and be the instrument for the release of the Israelites from captivity.

Or David, the youngest member of a large family of sons so insignificant he was out with the sheep not even in the family home. Some have proposed his legitimacy was in doubt which was why he was looking after the animals. However this was where he learned all the skills necessary to kill Goliath, survive in the desert when a king was determined to kill him and most importantly of all, the place where he developed into a man after God’s own heart. His beautiful psalms are a lasting testimony to the years spent as an outcast but which prepared him to be the greatest king Israel ever had and the ancestor of the Messiah.

Even Jesus’ forerunner and relative John the Baptist was a social outcast and misfit growing up in the desert dressed in camel hair. Yet Jesus said of him among those born of women there has not risen anyone greater than John the Baptist (Matthew 11: 11). Surely in the desert John developed into the one called ‘to prepare the way of the Lord.’

Jesus didn’t choose his disciples from the religious elite or synagogue. He chose rough fishermen who would become great fishers of men.

All of these men had to flow against the tide of the day, to stand up for the Lord and lead their nation into righteousness.

Jesus himself was the greatest outcast. The Son of God was born in a stable in obscurity and poverty because there was no room for his parents in society. His whole ministry was lived on the edge of society, feted one minute and condemned the next.

However this is a great source of encouragement for us, the ordinary made extraordinary by God’s call. Wherever we are whether we are in the spiritual desert, running from persecution, a social misfit or down the bottom end of society or just plain obscure, God uses people just like us. He calls us from the desert, obscurity, the despised places, the mundane where he has been transforming and training his sons and daughters, his people, his chosen ones to do extraordinary things for him.