So this is Christmas?
Carols, a nice log fire, a card on the mantelpiece, a nicely decorated tree. Christmas is upon us. Christmas music fills the malls, presents are wrapped and Santa comes to visit.
But what actually is Christmas?
What is the real story? Did shepherds come to Jesus? Yes. Did three kings come bearing gifts? No! That’s not in the Bible.
Here is the real story…
Mary is young woman who has fallen pregnant outside marriage. She carries with her public shame, and there is a mockery that will follow her and her son as he grows up. "Is this not Mary’s son?" they will ask. They only used this form of address as mockery, for the bastards… poor Joseph they thought.
She is travelling uncomfortably towards Bethlehem. She is almost at her time, every step of the way hurts, it jars through her swollen body. She lives as a subject of an absolute dictator. She is travelling because he wants to know how many people he has. Mary and Joseph end up with no place to stay. There is no prettiness where they sleep. It is smelly, dirty and unhygenic. Poor Mary away from home, family, friends, in the middle of the night gives birth to her first child.
Barely recovering she has to flee on a long journey into Egypt. Meanwhile in Bethlehem they are butchering children. Tearing them from their mother’s arms, running long swords through their screaming bodies, smashing their skulls off walls.
This is the reality of the Christmas Story
God entered the world in Jesus and since that time people who love Jesus have been often persecuted. And yet in spite of all of this it is estimated that 33.5% of the world population is Christian.
Today you can still be persecuted for Jesus’ sake.
There are many men in the UK who seek employment in the Middle East. To be a Christian there can cause many problems, you can be jailed, deported or imprisoned. I know of one group of men and women who held a weekly prayer meeting in their own home in Saudi Arabia. Just five or six of them meeting to pray for home and family. They were arrested, deported, and of course lost their jobs. You can’t take a Bible into Saudi Arabia. It will be confiscated at your point of entry.
I have a friend from North Africa. He grew up in strictly Islamic country. He was training to be an Imam. He read the New Testament and became a Christian. His life was threatened and there was no doubt he would soon be murdered. He fled to this country.
The reaction to Jesus remains the same. Hostility.
So why do people still follow him?
Because Jesus is alive!
A teenage boy called me a nutter recently after a church service attended by the local school. He doesn’t know, I know, he said it. Why did he call me a nutter? Because I said that Jesus was alive in my heart and in my life.
I haven’t lost it. That is what being a Christian is all about it is why Jesus came to us…
That’s the real message of Christmas, which can never be understood until we see the suffering and until we see the shadow of the Cross falling across the manger. Understand that and heaven’s gates are already open.
Written in 1995.