By Isle of Wight Observer
Have you been to a nativity play this year? You know the sort – shepherds wear tea-towels, angels wear coat-hangers and kings wear dressing gowns. Can you remember what you were all those years ago? Believe it or not, I was once a reindeer. It’s not in the Bible of course, but it was my school’s ‘creative’ take on the story!
As we come towards Christmas, I wonder if many of us might be arriving feeling a little like Mary and Joseph – it’s been a long journey to this point. Perhaps you can best relate to the character of the donkey – you’ve endured and walked and carried the load of others through some hard things this year.
Our hearts can so easily become full of the concerns and responsibilities of life. Relationships, health, jobs, family. At a deeper level, our plans, fears, memories, losses and longings for the future give us much to think about, before we have even started to buy a few presents and worked out how Christmas Day is going to look.
If this is you, can I suggest that the character of the Inn Keeper is worth a closer look? Mary and Joseph approach Bethlehem and there is no room wherever they turn. Everywhere is full.
Then they stumble across a little side alley with an Inn on the corner that says ‘full’ (yet again). But the landlord happens to be standing on the doorstep and notices them out of the corner of his eye. In that very moment, he sees them perhaps in a way that others have overlooked. It causes him to pause and remember that he has a tiny bit of space out the back – think of a lock-up garage! He says, “It’s already half full, but I can move the motor bike to the side and you can kip down there if you like.”
The heart of Christmas is a journey, but not just a journey from Nazareth to Bethlehem; it’s so much more.
It’s the great descending journey of a loving God who comes to us in the form of a baby – Jesus.
And I want to suggest this year, in the city of your heart, Jesus is looking for somewhere to stay. Like Bethlehem, your heart might be full with many concerns, but Jesus is looking for somewhere to stay. It might feel hard to pray, hard to find the words – you might not be feeling much at all – but a tiny place would be enough for hope, love and peace to be born. And it is exactly in receiving these gifts of hope, love and peace, that we can begin to see all our other concerns and challenges in life differently – perhaps with more self-compassion, renewed perspective and hope.
I love the new Coldplay song, ‘All My Love’. It’s well worth a listen. I especially like the video with Dick Van Dyke, which reminds me of a classic holiday movie, Mary Poppins. The words of the chorus are:
You got all my love
Whether it rains or pours, I’m all yours
You’ve got all my love
Whether it rains, it remains
You’ve got all my love.
Aren’t they just beautiful words? As I think about the message of Christmas, I see a parallel. Very simply, Jesus is God’s way of saying to us, “You’ve got all my love”.
I pray that we will each be able to find a little room at the Inn for that love to become ours this year.
May I wish all the IW Observer’s readers a wonderful Christmas and a prosperous New Year.