Unless you benefit from annual winter breaks in the sun, January is not necessarily a month we look forward to here in the UK. The long-range Met Office forecast invariably predicts cold and usually wet weather. It is still dark when you get up, the days are short and summer seems light-years away.

Add the usual pressures and stresses of a post-Christmas hangover, especially when the credit card bills drop arrive, and it’s easy at this time of year to run out of emotional energy.

For most of us, the weather and time of year just makes us feel low, vulnerable to colds or just plain irritable. For some it may become clinical. Whatever you call it … depression, “burnout”, or “the blahs”… it is an inescapable warning light that something is out of balance in our lives. The cumulative effect helps explains why three our of four of us visiting our GP tomorrow will do so for stress-related reasons. Whether you are an unborn child, a teenager, a mother, a city slicker, or well and truly retired, stress is the number one issue we face.

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What are you planning to do tomorrow? Beyond the predictable. You get extra Brownie points if you make it to the 8:00am service tomorrow at the Methodist Church in Cabrera Avenue. Imagine what it would be like to spend Christmas Day with Jesus. To have a one-to-one with Jesus for the whole day. Imagine. What would it be like? Special? Memorable? Life changing?

If it were possible to spend an ordinary day with Jesus, then there could be no more appropriate day than Christmas Day – the day we celebrate his birthday.
Is it possible?  When the angel visited Joseph he said of Jesus, “And they will call him Immanuel – which means ‘God with us.’” (Matthew 1:23). God with us. Think about that.

And one of the last things Jesus promised his friends was this: “I will be with you always.” (Matthew 28:20) “I – will – be – with – you – always. Always. God with us – always.  If God is with us, always, then perhaps we need to give more thought to how we can consciously spend the day with him – in his presence. What would a day with Jesus look like? How would it be different?  I suggest it would be filled with the things Jesus would do.  What would happen if you were to spend the whole of tomorrow doing everything the way Jesus would? In Jesus name?  In Jesus presence?

In what way would it be different? In order to live every moment of an ordinary Christmas day with Jesus, we have to begin the day with him. Right?

Here’s a multi-choice quiz to get us started. When does Christmas Day begin?

1. At midnight
2.  When the kids wake up
3.  When lunch is ready
4.  After the Queen’s speech
5.  At dusk the night before

The correct answer is: At dusk the night before.  The bible tells us in Genesis 1:5, “There was evening, and there was morning – the first day.”

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Far over the misty mountains cold.
To dungeons deep and caverns old.
We must ere break of day.
To seek the pale enchanted gold.

Is that a line from

A. Nativity 2?
B. James Bond?
C. Life of Pi?

The correct answer is
D. The Hobbit.

J.R.R. Tolkein’s fantasy takes place in “Middle-earth.” Middle Earth is not some never-never land. It is simply an adaptation of the Old English Middle–erthe from Middan-geard which is the name inhabited lands “between the seas.” Which means, in some profound sense Tolkien’s intended his fantasy world to be a mirror, or reflection of our own. So what has a fairy story about elves and dwarves got to do with Christmas? Lets try and find an answer through three riddles. Continue reading →

Please make yourself comfortable.  Now please cross your arms. Not hard was it? Glance down and notice the position of your hands and arms.  O.K. Relax, unfold your arms. Now I’d like you to do it again. But this time, put the arm that was underneath on top and the arm that was on top underneath. In other words, reverse your arms. Got it? I can see some of you are having difficulty. It wasn’t as easy to do this time, was it? Did it feel awkward? Uncomfortable? You really had to think about it. The first time it was natural, it didn’t require any thought, because that’s your preferred way of doing it.  We each cross our arms in a certain way, and no arm crossing technique is right or wrong, good or bad. They are just different.  And arm crossing is typical of just about everything we think and do.  That is my first point.

1. Recognise our Unique God-given Personalities

“As Jesus and his disciples were on their way, he came to a village where a woman named Martha opened her home to him. She had a sister called Mary, who sat at the Lord’s feet listening to what he said.” (10:38-39)

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“It wasn’t too long after creation that the animals got together to form a school. They wanted the best school possible; one that offered each student a well-rounded curriculum of swimming, running, climbing and flying. In order to graduate the animals agreed that they would each have to take all the courses. The duck was excellent at swimming. In fact, he was better than his instructor, but he was only making passing grades at climbing and was getting a very poor grade in running. The duck was so slow in running that he had to stay after school every day to practice. Even with that, there was little improvement. His webbed feet got badly worn from running and with such worn feet he would then only be able to get half his grade in swimming. Now average was quite acceptable to everyone else, so no one worried much about it except the duck. Now the rabbit was top of her class in running, but after a while she developed a twitch in her leg from all the time she spent in the water trying to improve her swimming.

The squirrel was a natural in climbing, but was constantly frustrated in flying class. His body became so bruised from all the hard landings that he didn’t do too well in climbing and ended up being pretty poor in running. The eagle was a continual problem student. She was disciplined for being nonconformist. For example, in climbing class she would always beat everyone else to the top of the tree, but insisted on using her own way to get there. Each of the animals had a particular area of expertise. When they did what they were designed to do they excelled. When they tried to operate outside their area of expertise, they were frustrated and ineffective. Can ducks run? Of course they can. Is that what they do best? Definitely not!

Just as every animal has been designed uniquely for survival, so every Christian has been given unique gifts and talents to grow the Church, the Body of Christ.[i] We were planned for God’s pleasure. This is our deepest need, our first and most fundamental purpose in life. To know God and enjoy him forever. Our second purpose in life is to discover we were formed for God’s family. In his family we find a place to belong., a place to serve and be fruitful, a place to grow.

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