There are certain things that we naturally associate with Christmas – one of those things is music. This time of year is filled with joyful music, spiritual and secular, some of it very good, but truthfully some of it is very bad. The events of that first Christmas is also filled it music and song and it is as you would expect very good. This morning we think one of the lesser remembered Christmas songs – the son of Zechariah in Luke 1 this is truly a song for the dark times.
Christmas is a colourful time of year. There are sparkling lights and bright wrapping paper. Green trees, red ribbon and shimmering decorations. But the first Christmas had all the makings of being grey and dreary. A young couple are forced into makeshift accommodation and the child enters the world with parents who are in poverty, in a land occupied by foreign oppressors. But into such an unlikely, drab scene comes a vibrant array of rich colour and light.
Come join with the Church family in a slightly different looking Carol service for 2020!
In Matthew 1:18-21 an angel announces a message to Joseph - that Mary would give birth to a son and he would save his people from their sins. This is the ‘reason for the season'.
As we think about Christmas and the messages that we send to others, we are going to reflect on what our ‘reason for the season’ is. Is our message as clear as we think it is?