The fact that we have a good God is a tremendous blessing. Other religions have powerful ‘gods’, but so often these ‘gods’ are capricious, wrathful and liable to harm as much as to bless. God is good and what He does is good. (Ps 119:68) This is a fundamental truth which needs to be thoroughly absorbed to equip us for a life where so much that happens is not good.

Goodness and niceness are not the same thing, however. God’s goodness doesn’t preclude suffering or discipline, but we can rest secure in the fact that He is working for our good in every circumstance and situation of life. (Rom 8:28) God takes the long view and is working from an eternal perspective and for an eternal destiny. Even when life is difficult, tragic and unfair, God’s goodness is the foundation on which we can base our hope.

In our ‘Little Big Church‘ service tonight, we had the help of Mickey to explore the meaning of Christmas:

Mickey seemed to think the meaning of Christmas was PRESENTS! He knew a lot about Christmas traditions, and the children enjoyed how he talked about Father Christmas (bringing presents) and Christmas trees (under which you put presents).

But, as Auntie Herlen reminded Mickey, there is more to Christmas than presents. Mickey talked about a fairy story, with a princess and a brave knight, but oddly enough, God did not choose to send His Son into a fairy story. Mary was no princess; she was an ordinary girl. Joseph was no knight; he was an ordinary carpenter. But God sent His Son into the world to save us in very ordinary ways, with the shepherds being the first visitors to the baby Jesus.

Mickey’s talk about presents was appreciated, nonetheless, when all the children received an Advent calendar – with a story book about the meaning of Christmas included. As the children enjoy the chocolates day by day, we pray they will also appreciate the meaning of Christmas more, and for the adults present… we too need to take our eyes off the presents and traditions and remind ourselves of the central theme of Christmas: Jesus sent to save the world from our sins, a story found in the New Testament (especially in Matthew 1-2 and Luke 1-2), a story which has the power to transform our lives and give us meaning and hope.

On the first Sunday in Advent, Dave spoke from Luke 2:6-16. As we prepare for Christmas, our memories are often taken up with family gatherings (helping to mix the Christmas pudding, checking name labels on parcels under the Christmas tree and Christmas walks in the snow), but the Nativity scenes described in this chapter of Luke also form part of our understanding of Christmas. The Nativity scene of shepherds surrounding Mary, Joseph and baby Jesus is often found on Christmas cards and this reminds us that even those who were considered lowly (being a shepherd was not a high-profile or highly paid job) were included by God as witnesses of the birth of this miracle child.

It’s very easy for us to become familiar with these scenes and to take for granted Joseph – a carpenter, a man of integrity whom God chose to protect Mary and her son – and Mary, whose song of praise shows us her heart for God. Nonetheless, these scenes remind us that the power of Christmas is often found in the ordinary and in the humble. Christmas brings us the gifts of God, but it does so in simple, ordinary ways. In the same way, too, we can bring the gifts of God to others, and need not be ashamed of our ordinariness. We ‘have this treasure in jars of clay to show that this all-surpassing power is from God and not from us‘ (2 Cor 4:7); God always uses the weak and the humble to fulfil His purposes.

Every day throughout December until Christmas Day I have committed to counting my blessings… and hopefully helping others to count theirs too! The Advent period is a time of pondering God’s many blessings to us, and I can’t think of a better way to let my heart prepare Him room than to fix my attention on who God is and what He has done for us.

I love children’s songs, for they focus our attention on essential truth. ‘Jesus loves me, this I know’ is one of the greatest blessings we can ever experience. To be loved is to have a permanent security blanket that can be wrapped around us at any time. Love holds us secure and provides stability, comfort, reassurance and hope.

God’s love is not fickle, capricious or temporary. It’s a tough, abiding, everlasting, unfailing love which can’t be earned, only gratefully received. God’s love was the motivation behind Christmas, the reason Jesus came to our world. (John 3:16) Even if no one else loves you and you have no other blessing to count, God’s love is there for you.

Some moments are easier to embrace than others. Some moments are full of joy, capturing innocence and exultation – that moment of complete surrender as bride and groom exchange vows, looking deep into each other’s eyes with love and promise, that moment of satisfied exhaustion as the pain of labour is forgotten in the joy of holding the newborn baby. But it’s harder to embrace the moment when the beloved snaps tetchily and a full-blown row escalates, leaving us fearful, angry and resentful or when the snuggly baby screams incessantly and vomits all over for the nth time in 24 hours, leaving us exhausted and desperate. It’s harder to embrace the moment as we lie in bed feeling ill and lifeless, nausea wracking us and robbing us of sleep. Such moments seem impossible to embrace.

Richard Rohr comments that God deals with reality, with what is. Jean-Pierre de Caussade, an 18th century Jesuit, said it’s key to want God ‘as God is, not as we imagine or would like Him to be.’ This is the key to embracing the moment, as we understand afresh who God is.

God is love. He is good. He works in all circumstances for our good. The disasters and catastrophes of life – and there are plenty of these, often striking us with breath-taking swiftness – can be embraced with gladness, not because they are good, but because He is.

To embrace the moment means to pause and to breathe God in, no matter what. As we do this, He then pours in grace and the capacity to carry on. We can then exhale gratitude and learn to give thanks for everying in all circumstances. (Eph 5:20, 1 Thess 5:18).

Stop. Embrace. Breathe in. Breathe out.

He’s got this. He’s got you.

One of the privileges of being with 4FrontTheatre yesterday was the chance to see ‘behind the scenes’ of a professional theatre company. I’ve often thought that being ‘on tour’ is a very odd way of living. It sounds glamorous – a different place each day, the adulation of an audience, the buzz of performance and so on – but to a homebird like myself, it also sounds very scary. I would hate to be away from home and family for days on end, and these guys don’t have the glamour of luxury hotels like the mega-rich!

Their days involve a lot of travelling, a lot of eating what other people put in front of them, a lot of setting up and taking down. Not for them the lifestyle of the rock star, with roadies to do all the heavy work: they have to carry everything out of the van themselves, set it all up, take it all down and carry it back to the van, often with time constraints chipping away at their sang-froid (dinner ladies in schools can be intimidating people!) I was amazed at the kit they had to bring with them: drills, glue guns, cable ties, scissors, sewing kits, allen keys, screwdrivers, gaffer tape galore! They looked like they had shares in B & Q!

Rob waiting for the glue gun to heat up:

Have step-ladders, will travel…

Sometimes they do all this twice a day, moving from one venue to the next.

In Goldthorpe, they did 3 shows, not two, and there was a brief lull between the afternoon performance and the evening performance. Apart from eating lunch and phoning friends and family, what did they do? Surprisingly, perhaps, they did not go to sleep… instead, they reviewed the performances and rehearsed. Again. And again. I was reminded of the quotation which tells us the difference between an amateur and a professional: ‘An amateur practises until he gets it right. A professional practises until he can’t get it wrong.’

They reviewed what had gone well. They were ruthless with themselves, freely owning to mistakes I’d never even noticed. They listened to each other and accepted both praise and criticism with the same desire to be better next time. They cut lines, revised lines, reviewed movements (each performance space is different and needs their careful choreography, especially in the very physical world of pantomime). They were still rehearsing when the audience started gathering outside the building before 6 p.m.

I was a spectator to most of this, unable to help because I didn’t know where everything went or how they could improve the show. But what I learned from being with them was that preparation and perseverance pay off. I may never be able to do what they do, but I know those things are crucial in every area of our lives and so the ‘behind the scenes’ lessons these guys taught me were as valuable as the ones I learned from the show itself. I also learned they are grateful people (polite, thanking us for food and accommodation) who truly love God and are happy to serve Him in the way they can do this best. We’re all different and these differences don’t diminish us, but truly give us many different methods to reach out to people.