I have been faintly bemused in the last week by how my Christmas doesn’t appear to be the same as what is going on around me.
The paper has a vox pop asking what the favourite carol was
and the answers we got were Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, White Christmas and Jingle Bell Rock!
Aren’t actually carols, there you go.
The Camera Shop is sending me special offers for the Twelve Days of Christmas
Trouble is Christmas hasn’t begun.
It is easy to bemoan this.
The world seems to no more about Fr Christmas than about Jesus.
Ho, Ho, Ho
Actually we are just about to begin a part of the season that shows we have got this the wrong way round.
Not Ho, Ho Ho at all
But O O O
Each day from tomorrow until Christmas a special song is sung
which begins with the exclamation Oh!
We know them because we sing them in that hymn O come, o come.
So on 24 December we sing
O Immanuel...one of the great Christ words
It means GOD IS WITH US
The other are seductive .
Tomorrow O wisdom! God is the depth of Wisdom
O Lord...Adonai...God is the Lord of life
O root of Jesse- the God of our family, our history and our future & the Key to all that is to come
The sunrise and the Lord of the nations.
It’s a bit different from crackers and tinsel!
What do you want John asks the people who come,
religious teachers
ordinary people, tax collectors and tough guys.
And they all want what we want
To be close to Godf.
He tells them
to pay attention to their lives
What’s happening where you are
Don’t cheat, don’t bully
The (perhaps fading) Christian message
is that God is with us
Immanuel
in the midst of what we do
our work, our family
the way we treat other people
It’s not Ho Ho Ho
It’s O...is that it is about...forgiveness
O...seeing that God loves everyone
O...not trying to find over there...but rather to find God here in the midts.
To seek for Wisdom
to let the light and life of God shine like the Sun
I suspect we are being sold a pup
by those who only want to sell us stuff
Even those who only want to laugh.
Jesus is God with us.
And we are being invited to find that
in our relationships
as we struggles, as we succeed
in our difficulties,
to allow God to draw close
and not just be satisfied with superficiality.
There is a big difference between Jingle Bells and O come all ye faithful
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