Dave spoke this morning from Isaiah 9:6-7. Christmas is highly commercialised nowadays, but we need to recapture the reason for the season. The birth of Jesus was not an unexpected event, but was the fulfilment of God’s promises throughout the ages. Isaiah spoke about the One to come as ‘Wonderful Counsellor, Mighty God, Everlasting Father, Prince of Peace’, and in Jesus we see the beginning of God’s reign on earth which will be fully seen on His second coming. We live in the times between His first and second Advent, but Christmas becomes a time of hope and reminds us also of the challenge to be ready for when Jesus comes again.

We long for hope, living as we do in times of suffering, trials, disappointments and wars. God still has a good plan for our lives (Jer 29:11) and this includes hope and a future. Sacred truth such as this is always lived out in a secular realm. At Christmas, we remember how Jesus was born in a place ordered by the Roman emperor, but also realise that this was foreordained by God, long before it happened. (Micah 5:2) The two realities of God’s rule and Roman rule were brought together as God orchestrated every aspect of life to serve His purposes. Jesus being born in a stable in Bethlehem may not have been Mary’s ideal birth plan, but this was all part of God’s plan. Jesus was born at ‘just the right time’ (Gal 4:4) and despite the tensions of the day (with Herod trying to kill all those baby boys whom he saw as potential rivals to his throne), God’s will prevailed.

The shepherds were the first visitors to the stable (see Luke 2). Shepherds were not held in high esteem at this time (they were not even allowed to testify in court), but these were the people chosen by God to visit Jesus and to tell others about the miracle they had witnessed. God broke into their mundane world in spectacular fashion, and they remind us that simple obedience to God brings blessing and joy. They were blessed as they went to visit Jesus as commanded; they were essential to the Christmas story, for they remind us that we must celebrate the King.

As we prepare for both Christmas celebrations and the return of our King, we too can be blessed if we obey Jesus’s commands (see John 13:17). We must not just hear the word; we must live it!

Today is the second Sunday in Advent, and the theme for this week is peace.

We live in a world where peace is a rare commodity. Families often are at enmity with each other; family feuds can last for years and lead to bickering, arguments and the cold result of estrangement. Countries are at enmity with each other, often resorting to war to try to achieve dominance and superiority. Living at peace, on a personal or more general level, is not always easy.

The difficulties we have with peaceful living result from sin, from our need to dominate, from our lack of humility and love. At Christmas we celebrate the arrival of the Prince of Peace, the One whose death and resurrection pave the way for those who have been far away from God because of transgression and sin to be brought near to God (see Ephesians 2.)

The path of peace is lined with humility, forgiveness, love, mercy and service. There is no way we can have inner peace, peace with God or peace with others unless we focus on how Jesus achieved peace. There is no way we can be peacemakers unless we study His life and how He did it.

Peace comes when there is unity. Instead of being fragmented people, torn apart by conflicting desires, warring elements within us, when we allow Jesus to bring purpose and wholeness to our lives, we can live at peace.

Christmas reminds us of the helplessness Jesus embraced in putting on human flesh. We see the indignity of the Incarnation, the voluntary self-limitation the Son of God embraced. He ‘made Himself nothing,’ as Philippians 2:7 tells us.

Perhaps our lack of peace comes from our unwillingness to humble ourselves. Instead of strutting and boasting, if we are willing to be servants of God, we can know peace within.

Tonight in our Little Big Church service, we looked again at the subject of light. We did science experiments involving prisms, shining light on them to reveal the different colours of the rainbow, and shining a torch on a glass of water to show how refraction makes the arrows behind the glass appear to reverse direction! We talked about different sources of light, including the sun, moon and stars and animals which light up like jellyfish and glow worms.

In the Bible, we are told that Jesus is the Light of the world (John 8:12), another one of the ‘I am’ statements in John’s Gospel that indicates the deity of Jesus (since God is light – 1 John 1:5). Those who follow Jesus have the light of life and indeed Jesus says that we are now the light of the world too. (Matt 5:14) Jesus’s light in us shines in us and through us. It’s not a temporary light, like the lights we see when we have firework displays. They are spectacular, bright and dazzling, but they don’t last long! We are more like street lights, standing firm and strong, shining consistently.

Christmas is a time when we think a lot about lights and use lights a lot more than usual: Christmas tree lights, lights in our windows, Advent candles and so on. As we enter the season of Advent, let’s continue to shine brightly, for when we follow Jesus, the Light of the world, we don’t have to be afraid of darkness, for He gives us the light of life.