When I was a boy, I used to love stories by Enid Blyton. The plot might go something like this.
Three children are exploring a hillside one wintry afternoon. Find a cave. Creep in and let their eyes adjust to the gloom. Suddenly: an unearthly wailing sound comes from further in! Two children, panic-stricken, clutch each other and prepare to flee. But one reaches into her pocket: and brings out a torch. Bravely, they creep further into the cave, and by the light of the torch, they see a dog with its paw trapped between two rocks. The children are able to set it free and it licks its paw, kind of gives it a shake, and then its tail begins to wag and it jumps and licks them and everyone is laughing again.
What we forget, as we grow up, is that life is exactly like that, every day, whether you know it or not. Bad things are happening in dark places: to you, or to those around you. But you have courage. And you have a torch. If you have Christ within you, you are a light-bearer; an agent for good change in a world in real need of good news.
Over a hundred children were slain this month by religious extremists in Pakistan. Six people died by accident when a rubbish truck crashed into Christmas shoppers in Glasgow. Some of you here are nursing private sorrows. Some people ask, how can a loving God allow these things?
But the thing is: these tragedies have changed huge numbers of lives. God did not cause these things as some kind of cruel lesson. But He can bring heroism, changed lives, new political resolution, out of tragedy. It is not what happens to us that defines us: it is how we respond. We are defined by our daily choices: today, will I show love? Today, will I respond to someone else’s anger with a gentle word? Today, will I see beauty in a raindrop, or just wish I’d brought my umbrella? Today, will I see a child born to a poor, teenage mother, lying in an animal’s feeding trough because he has no bed: or will I see the God of the Universe, entering our world to offer us proof of His love?
We are called to cultivate an attitude of Godliness: we are made in His image, after all. God knows us through and through; He doesn’t stop loving us if we let tragedies get under our skin. But this Christmas, you need to know that you are loved by God, personally and deeply. The God who created the Universe knows you by name.
Think back to the first Christmas. Mary was quietly going about her teenage business when the angel Gabriel appeared to her; greeted her as someone favoured by God; and said she was going to become pregnant with the Son of God and she should name him Jesus, God saves us. After an initial moment of shock, with the rest of her life just turned upside down, I can look back down the ages and see Mary taking a deep breath, and saying, with all the courage her teenager’s heart could muster, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.’
God’s expectation is that we will spend our lives, like Mary, in obedience to His prompting. And when we see hurt or injustice crushing the hope or the joy from someone else: we will remember Enid Blyton, and step in to the darkness with the light of Christ. That is our holy calling.
Three children are exploring a hillside one wintry afternoon. Find a cave. Creep in and let their eyes adjust to the gloom. Suddenly: an unearthly wailing sound comes from further in! Two children, panic-stricken, clutch each other and prepare to flee. But one reaches into her pocket: and brings out a torch. Bravely, they creep further into the cave, and by the light of the torch, they see a dog with its paw trapped between two rocks. The children are able to set it free and it licks its paw, kind of gives it a shake, and then its tail begins to wag and it jumps and licks them and everyone is laughing again.
What we forget, as we grow up, is that life is exactly like that, every day, whether you know it or not. Bad things are happening in dark places: to you, or to those around you. But you have courage. And you have a torch. If you have Christ within you, you are a light-bearer; an agent for good change in a world in real need of good news.
Over a hundred children were slain this month by religious extremists in Pakistan. Six people died by accident when a rubbish truck crashed into Christmas shoppers in Glasgow. Some of you here are nursing private sorrows. Some people ask, how can a loving God allow these things?
But the thing is: these tragedies have changed huge numbers of lives. God did not cause these things as some kind of cruel lesson. But He can bring heroism, changed lives, new political resolution, out of tragedy. It is not what happens to us that defines us: it is how we respond. We are defined by our daily choices: today, will I show love? Today, will I respond to someone else’s anger with a gentle word? Today, will I see beauty in a raindrop, or just wish I’d brought my umbrella? Today, will I see a child born to a poor, teenage mother, lying in an animal’s feeding trough because he has no bed: or will I see the God of the Universe, entering our world to offer us proof of His love?
We are called to cultivate an attitude of Godliness: we are made in His image, after all. God knows us through and through; He doesn’t stop loving us if we let tragedies get under our skin. But this Christmas, you need to know that you are loved by God, personally and deeply. The God who created the Universe knows you by name.
Think back to the first Christmas. Mary was quietly going about her teenage business when the angel Gabriel appeared to her; greeted her as someone favoured by God; and said she was going to become pregnant with the Son of God and she should name him Jesus, God saves us. After an initial moment of shock, with the rest of her life just turned upside down, I can look back down the ages and see Mary taking a deep breath, and saying, with all the courage her teenager’s heart could muster, ‘I am the Lord’s servant. May your word to me be fulfilled.’
God’s expectation is that we will spend our lives, like Mary, in obedience to His prompting. And when we see hurt or injustice crushing the hope or the joy from someone else: we will remember Enid Blyton, and step in to the darkness with the light of Christ. That is our holy calling.