What is it you love about Christmas?

I absolutely love this time of year.  I love all the invitations to celebrations, gift giving, twinkling Christmas lights and beautiful  Christmas carols because they all remind me of the great joy brought to the world by the birth of that little baby in Bethlehem so long ago.   I was preparing for the Children’s Christmas service this week and watching some of the movie “The Nativity story” which came out a few years ago.  (Highly recommended if you haven’t seen it!)    The scene which shows Jesus being born, with the starlight streaming into the stable and showing all the emotion on the faces of Mary and Joseph is really beautiful. The whole movie actually is beautiful, not just because it’s well filmed and acted, but more because the story is beautiful. We know the story so well, don’t we – but I must say, in watching this movie, I was struck afresh at the amazing series of events that God brought about to become a baby and live among us. Back in 1995 there was a song released by the singer Joan Osborne called “One of us”.  Some of the lyrics were—“What if God were one of us…If God had a face what would it look like?And would you want to see,if seeing meant thatyou would have to believein things like heaven and in Jesus andthe saints and all the prophets…” Good questions, Joan!     And as we remember this time of year -  on that first Christmas all those years ago, God DID become one of us.   “Look, the young woman is with child and shall bear a son, and shall name him Immanuel” (Is 7:14).  Immanuel, God with us – God as one of us. This is amazing, wonderful and mind-blowing stuff, but it also leads to the kind of questions in the song lyrics.  If Christmas is true, if God really did become one of us, if God really did have a face that we could see – what would that actually mean?   It would mean the truth would be in front of us and we would have to choose to believe it or not.    Christmas is a wonderful time of year with lots to celebrate! But as well as invitations to Christmas parties and special carols nights, there is also  an invitation for all of us to choose to believe in the truth of God as one of us.      This means we not only believe in the baby Jesus, but in the man Jesus whose life was lived and given so we could be one with God. As Mary says while holding her newborn in “The Nativity Story” movie (and as Isaiah 9:6 reminds us)“He is for all mankind”.Liz Pemberton