Coming Home to Jesus

I wonder why the lead up to Christmas so often feels fraught with particular pressures. There’s the gift getting and the card sending, there’s the extra get togethers and expenses. But also, too often it seems to me, there are the relationship pressures. People. Those we love, those in our Christian and blood family – near and far - as well as those in a wider circle that we feel we need to connect with at this time of the year.

There’s so much opportunity for any of these encounters to be nice and rich and lovely, but also the potential for stress and trickiness and pain. Or, for some of us, maybe it’s the lack of people, maybe a particular person, that brings with it a sense of loss which feels particularly sorrowful when we’re ‘supposed’ to be having a wonderful time with significant people. Whichever way you cut that relational cake, it all feels pretty stressful to me!

So, then, I wonder what does Jesus Christ, the very centre of Christmas, have to do with all of that? This Jesus was born into a complicated family and a precarious social context. His family became refugees very early in His life, and were fleeing for their lives. This Jesus ‘had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him’. This Jesus ‘was despised and rejected by mankind, a man of suffering, and familiar with pain’ (Isaiah 53:2-3).

Early this morning, alone with the Lord, I listened to a selection of beautiful old Christmas songs: all about Jesus. Then later, and with a bunch of people I really care about and with whom spend much of my life, we sang a heap of contemporary songs, worshipful and powerful: all about Jesus.

And that’s where I found myself ‘coming home’ to where Jesus fits into Christmas. It’s exactly the same place He fits into every moment of every day of my whole life - right in the very centre. At this time of year, we remember that He came as a vulnerable little baby to live and die and be resurrected in order to rescue us each with our complicated lives, and less-than-perfect relationships, because we need Him. Human beings always have needed Him. We can’t make life work without Him. We can’t get it right all the time, for ourselves, or for those around us, or even – especially – for God Himself. That’s the point! That’s why He came.

But we also remember that He’s coming again. He’s not finished with us yet. Wherever we find ourselves, relationally, emotionally, spiritually, in this moment, our story isn’t finished yet. Jesus has come and we have the privilege of living with Him at the very centre of our lives. But, however rag-tag and vulnerable or lonely or overwhelmed we feel right now, our story isn’t over yet. He’s coming again.