Advent: Hope (Day 7)

There have been mysterious going on at the charity shop on the Height!

At the beginning of November, the baby Jesus disappeared from his crib. Had he been snatched perhaps, or had he been accidentally knocked on the floor? Just as mysteriously, he reappeared the following day.

Two weeks later, Greggs the bakers found themselves under fire for replacing baby Jesus with – wait for it – a sausage roll!!

Mmm…

In the run-up to Christmas, with all its widespread rampant commercialism, it is all too easy to take your eyes off Jesus. Maybe you – like me – need to constantly remind yourself that Jesus is, in common parlance, the Reason for the Season.

And in the midst of all the business we can overlook that which is the essence of Christmas – Jesus, Immanuel.

God with us.

Always.

When all the paraphernalia is stripped away we have a tiny, fragile baby; ‘the hope and fears of all the tears… met in Him’.

This is the real mystery is it not?

The Incarnation.

God made man.

So strain your ears to listen out, amidst the clamour, for his ‘moth breath’, barely perceptible but life-enhancing and so worth the effort.

(written by Ann Hudson)