Thoughts for the Day

Luke 2: 20 The shepherds returned, glorifying and praising God for all the things they had heard and seen, which were just as they had been told.

Advent is over, but I hope you will allow me this postscript to the series today.

I find I have disproportionately more vivid memories of Christmases past than of any other time of the year.  I’m sure it has something to do with Christmas being a festival like no other in our cultural calendar.  Perhaps too it is something to do with the mystery of those family traditions, an (imagined?) consistent backdrop of the way “we” do things in contrast to which any variation is more memorable.  Certainly too, for many Christmastime is scarred by the memory of a coinciding traumatic event such as a death or accident that seems forever coupled to it.

So what, then, will be the vivid memory of this year’s Christmas for you?  Will it be your personal experience of the impact of the pandemic?  Disappointment?  Isolation?  Loss?  Your own sickness?  Or the sickness, or even death, of someone near and dear to you?  That would be understandable.  But alongside any of these, just perhaps it can also be that this Christmas we used the disruption to our normal celebration to focus more on the bible narrative of the incarnation, to fix our thoughts on the unchanging tidings of “great joy for all people”.

Looking back at the last of our verses, I note Luke’s final comment that the things the shepherds had heard and seen “were just as they had been told”.  Arguably, he didn’t really need to add that.  But I read into the words a challenge from Luke to all his readers who, unlike the shepherds, have not personally seen and heard those things, but rely on what we have been told and taught.  Early in this series, I invited us all to consider whether we were prepared to believe Luke’s narrative.  I pray you are confident to do so.

Merry Christmas and thanks for following this series.