LOOKING FORWARD TO CHRISTMAS 2020?

 Not everyone looks forward to Christmas with joy or expectation. For some it may prove to be an exceptionally hard time.

Hard for some because it is supposed to be ‘Happy Families,’ and yet families do not always get on, and even gifts can cause difficulty because maybe we do not have the same finances to match theirs.

But maybe hard for others because of the happy family time it has been in the past and for those of us who are survivors, still alive while most of our family have died, even though other younger members of our tribe seek to care for us, we may be still prone to look back.

Still others may be remembering sad times. A tragedy at Christmas time seems to be especially so, as every Christmas after this is tinged by this awful memory.

I thought God had planned for me the ideal family Christmas before I left these shores for New Guinea, not knowing if or when I might ever return. Our family Christmases had become fractured since my sister and I broke away from our parents teaching, and it became easier for us all if we had been invited elsewhere. But now at last it seemed we were all going to be together, a special gift for me to remember.

However, it had not turned out as we had planned. Our youngest sister, always the maverick, had agreed to join us, but at the last minute her circumstances changed. She was greatly in need of family around her, but though our mother and brother had made the long journey to fetch her she had refused their help, and we at home had a tearful Christmas.

So it was that when it came to my first Christmas in the Southern hemisphere I found God had set me free from looking back with longing, and released me to enjoy this new experience where the people, having so recently heard the wonderful story of how the Son of God was born among the poor and needy, came from the villages
around to rejoice with us, and then we single folk on the mission station shared the rest of the day together.

God says, through the prophet Isaiah, ‘Remember not the former things, neither consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing, now it shall spring forth.’ (Isaiah 43:18,19)

I will never forgot the wonderful Christmas parties we had in my grandparent house where, as the first grandchildren, we were spoilt by all these aunts and uncles, but I don’t have to look back with longing. That is all part of what God has made me 
today. God wants us each to live in expectation of new blessings and opportunities. This Christmas we may still be under lockdown because of the pandemic, but nothing can prevent God from blessing us and using us this Christmastime too.

                              COVID – FREE CHRISTMAS

There was no pandemic in Bethlehem

          In that Christmas so long ago

But there were   taxes and curses and Rome’s iron rule

And pain and squalor, we know.

 

No twinkling lights or Christmas cards

But one very special star

And wise men who read its message

          And journeyed there from afar

 

No sleigh bells or singing of carols

          But the angelic choir from on high

 Sang ‘Glory to God in the highest’

          Of the Christ Child, born to die.

 

So we’ll thank our God for Christmas

Though Covid’s still lurking abroad

For nothing can mar the gift God has given

          Of his Son, Christ Jesus our Lord