It is just fabulous to be with you this week and it’s not just any week of course, it’s Christmas week. I remember how exciting this week was when I was a kid.

My parents were European so even though I grew up here in Australia we always had a fresh live Christmas tree. And it would be about now that we’d be decorating that tree with the decorations that actually I still have and use to this day.

They’re in a suitcase under my stairs for most of the year. Many of those same decorations we used way back then, forty years ago when I was a kid, have been handed down to me and my wife Jacqui and I still use some of them today.

And mum would be baking this special bread that she always baked for Christmas and these little horse shoe shaped hazelnut shortbread things called vanilli-kipfel, a German thing. So there would be these amazing smells happening around the house that excited my senses as a young boy.

Each day was so excruciatingly long, these few days in the final countdown to Christmas. Because when Christmas finally arrives, finally, finally, finally, after such a long wait we came to open the presents under the tree and that, that’s what Christmas was all about for me. Opening presents. Wow, that was an amazing time. With presents under the tree, that’s what Christmas is all about.

I remember one year getting a fishing rod. That was really exciting. And another year a sheriff’s outfit, you know with the little felt hat and the badge and the pretend holster with pistols on either side. Each year my parents seemed to manage to choose some presents that, for me, really hit the spot.

They knew who I was and somehow, miraculously, they thought about it and just bought these presents that, well they were me. They were just what a little boy wanted. All though mum, if you’re listening, I’m still waiting for the slot car set. They never bought me a slot car set. I don’t know why, they just never got around to it.

Anyhow, we weren’t a particularly wealthy family. Dad had a good job but it wasn’t the value of the presents that counted. It was the fact that they were especially for me. Of course now, you grow up and you become an adult and the presents don’t matter so much anymore.

I’m not one for presents these days, I’d be quite happy to see others open theirs but I’m happy not to receive anything at all ’cause that’s just me. And I guess we’ve all been on the receiving end of a present that’s completely inappropriate. That cheap tie or the bottle of aftershave that ooh, or that box of monogrammed hankies.

Or if you’re a woman, what do we buy a woman when we just don’t know what to buy and we think, ‘oh it’s too hard’. Some cheap earrings or a scarf. You know the sort of thing. Or something completely useless for the kitchen that she’s never ever going to use.

And you look at it and you smile and you make fuss and you thank the person but inside you’re thinking, ‘What a complete waste of money and time that was. What a waste. I’m just going to throw this thing in the cupboard or in the drawer and never use it. And then, a few months later I’m going to have a clean out and it will end up in the rubbish or the trash depending on what part of the world you live in.’

And that’s it. My immediate reaction to those sorts of Christmas presents is, ‘Why didn’t you give this money that you spent on this useless present to the poor. Why didn’t you buy food or clothes for someone who really needed it instead?’

It’s not just the present is useless to us and that it’s a waste. You know what hurts most about that sort of present, it’s that the person hasn’t bothered to stop and think about it. They haven’t taken the trouble or the effort to think about who we are and what we’re into and what we’d like and what we don’t like.

They’ve just bought something because they felt they had to and so it’s like this present, this thing that was supposed to bless you. It’s more of an insult than a blessing. A slap in the face. A put down that says I don’t care enough about you or think enough of you to bother to put any effort or time into getting you something that you’d really like.

So, the old saying ‘It’s the thought that counts’ is absolutely true. Nothing to do with the value of the present. Everything to do with what the present says about the relationship between the giver and the receiver.

Christmas has always been about presents. The very first Christmas, of course, it wasn’t called Christmas. There was no great holiday. There was no great celebration. The shops weren’t lit up. There were no Christmas catalogues in the letter boxes around Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

In many ways it was a day like any other day. It was a night like any other night. Of course at the time there was a great disruption and dislocation because the Romans had decided to have a census. And this was before computers so people had to travel to their ancestral homes, that’s how they sorted the people out into families and tribes.

And they were staying in inns and in peoples houses and the place was packed to the rafters. But it was just an ordinary day in many respects. For all God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, in many respects a day like any other day.

But out the back of one of the inns in Bethlehem a young woman, probably a teenager, Mary was having a baby out of wedlock. And this baby, Jesus the Son of God, was the very first Christmas present. Not a tie or a scarf or a bottle of cheap perfume or after shave or cufflinks or a cheap set of earrings. Or even a gold watch or a diamond necklace. No, the very first Christmas present was a person, the Son of God.

Now I struggle sometimes to imagine what goes on in Gods heart and in His mind, what He’s thinking and feeling. His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. His ways aren’t our ways. But imagine, imagine someone who has everything. Someone who can have anything he wants. Someone who can give anything he wants. Imagine how He must have planned that first Christmas present.

From the beginning of time, from before time even began He conceived this plan. This plan to give you and me a free will. A plan born out of such a great and mighty love that He would give us the free will to accept Him or reject Him. Knowing full well that we would all reject Him. Knowing that it was only by doing this that He’d be able to tell us how much He loves us by giving us His Son.

Imagine the great and mighty Father heart of God as He looked down at His Son being born. Imagine what was going through His heart and His mind as He saw Jesus slip into this world the way you and I slipped into this world.

Out back there in that smelly, dirty stable. The overwhelming joy at seeing God the Son become a human being just like you and me. The sweet sound of that first newborns cry in this world as He sucked His first chest full of air in and let it out as a cry.

And the deep pain at the knowledge of knowing what His Son would have to endure. The rejection. The ridicule. The beatings. The spitting. And those nails, those cruel nails on the cross.

God the Father, my hunch is it was a bitter sweet time for Him but it’s an idea that had been in the making for an eternity. This first Christmas present, His one and only Son.

You know what they say, it’s the thought that counts.

I remember when I was a young man training to be an army officer at the Royal Military College Duntroon. Queen Elizabeth II visited Australia. It was a special occasion and we put on a parade for her, all 400 of us. It was a grand affair, pomp and ceremony, and we practised extra hard for that parade. I have to tell you our drill was just spot on.

We had an honour guard to line the entrance of the college and we were waiting three hours in the hot sun, standing to attention because she was running late. The cadet on my right collapsed in the heat. It was an amazing thing, so much effort for so many people. But after all, the Queen was visiting. That’s what you do for royalty; at least we did back then.

And that’s why, when I look back to the coming of the King of Kings and the Lord of Lords, that first Christmas a couple of thousand years ago, that’s why it’s such a strange affair.

It’s odd that if Jesus truly was and is the Son of God. How odd that He should enter this world, not with a fanfare of trumpets and a parade, not with a clear announcement and proclamation amongst God’s chosen people, Israel, but with His glory veiled, hidden. Strange that He should arrive in a stable, don’t you think?

Strange indeed. I know if I were God my son surely would have been born into a castle. No-one would have been in any doubt who he was or what he was there for. No, if I were God people would have been waiting on my son hands and feet. There would have been parades and honour guards and pomp and ceremony that’s for sure.

But fortunately for you, I guess, I’m not God. And God chose this rather odd way of bringing His Son into the world. Was it something He dreamed up on the spur of the moment or was it always His plan? Well if we go back to the prophet Isaiah who prophesised over 700 years before the birth of Jesus, it seems that God had always had a plan for His Son to be, well humble. Have a listen to this, Isaiah chapter 53, verses 1 to 3:

“Who has believed what we’ve heard and to whom has the arm of the Lord been revealed? For he grew up before him like a young plant and like a root out of dry ground he had no formal majesty that we should look at him. Nothing in his appearance that we should desire him. He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised and we held him of no account.”

That’s what Isaiah said about the coming of Jesus. Just think about it a moment. Israel were God’s chosen people. They lived in the promises of God, God’s Promised Land which God gave them many, many years before. And they had blessing. It was a land flowing with milk and honey. It truly was a beautiful place.

But Gods people rejected God and so in 587 BC they were punished. The Babylonians rose up. They became the world power. They invaded the country. They destroyed everything including the Temple and they took the people into captivity, into slavery in Babylon for seventy years.

And after that, even though they got to return back to the Promised Land, they were always under foreign occupation: first the Persians, then the Greeks and now, just before Jesus is born, the Romans – the brutal Roman Empire occupation. So by the time Jesus was about to be born they were expecting a king to save them from this occupation. To set them free. To restore them back to the freedom that they’d known in the Promised Land under kings like David a thousand years before.

They were expecting a messiah all right but one like you and I would expect when someone says the word ‘king’. See, surely God would send them another king like David to sit on the throne in Jerusalem and kick those Romans out and restore Israel back to it’s former glory. Back to the blessings that God had promised Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Back to the things that God had promised King David.

But that didn’t happen. In fact the nation of Israel lived under one form of occupation or another until, well until when … 1948 when the modern state of Israel was declared. Almost 2,000 years later.

See, God wasn’t in the business back then of meeting the worldly expectations of His people and my hunch is, He’s still not in the business of meeting the worldly expectations of His people. He was doing something different, something new. And so He sends them His Son, the Messiah who, as Isaiah prophesised:

“He had no formal majesty that we should look at Him. Nothing in His appearance that we should desire Him.”

And what did the people do? Did they rejoice? Did they say, ‘wow, look at what Gods done. God’s done something so much better than what we ever expected. He didn’t send us an earthly king to establish our earthly kingdom, a kingdom that surely would one day have to pass away. No, no, God has sent us a heavenly king to establish the kingdom of heaven here on earth, a Kingdom that will never pass away.’

Is that the conclusion they came to? No! Again as Isaiah prophesised 700 years before and rightly predicted:

“He was despised and rejected by others, a man of suffering and acquainted with infirmity and as one from whom others hide their faces, he was despised and we held him of no account.”

In fact, even after three and a half years as His disciples seeing all the amazing miracles Jesus did, hearing Him preach all those amazing sermons, even witnessing His death and His miraculous resurrection, after all of that here’s what His disciples asked Him. Acts chapter 1, verse 6:

“When they come together with Him they asked Him, “Lord, is this the time when you’ll restore the kingdom of Israel?”

See they couldn’t let go of their worldly world view. They still didn’t get it. They still thought that Jesus came to restore Israel back to its former glory. Jesus wasn’t born on that starry night in Bethlehem to fit in with our expectations and to dance to our tune. He didn’t come to establish something that, one day, would pass away. He came to establish an utterly different kind of kingdom, the Kingdom of God that reigns in our hearts; a Kingdom not of this world; a Kingdom that would last forever.

Let me ask you, what do you make of this rather strange sort of King, Jesus? What is His coming mean to you? What does Christmas mean to you? Is it still a child’s pantomime, this kind of ritual thing that you go through year after year? Or has this rather odd, rather radical, rather unconventional King established His Kingdom in your heart?

And if you’re struggling to answer that question, if you’re not quite sure whether He’s touched your heart then, my friend, you’re not alone. Many a man, many a woman struggles to know, how can I know if Jesus is the Lord of my life?

Well actually it’s much easier than you think. When you hear these words about Jesus, when you hear the story of Christmas, as you listen to someone telling you the story of Jesus, your heart aches to belong to Him. That’s how you know. You hear about Jesus and you think, ‘Yes, yes. That is what I want. That is what I want for the rest of my life. That is what I want for the rest of eternity. I want to know Jesus.’

My friend, if your heart aches like that then can I implore you, this Christmas live it differently. This Christmas live it for Jesus.

©

It is just fabulous to be with you this week and it’s not just any week of course, it’s Christmas week. I remember how exciting this week was when I was a kid. My parents were European so even though I grew up here in Australia we always had a fresh live Christmas tree. And it would be about now that we’d be decorating that tree with the decorations that actually I still have and use to this day.

They’re in a suitcase under my stairs for most of the year. Many of those same decorations we used way back then, forty years ago when I was a kid, have been handed down to me and my wife Jacqui and I still use some of them today.

And mum would be baking this special bread that she always baked for Christmas and these little horse shoe shaped hazelnut shortbread things called vanilli-kipfel, a German thing. So there would be these amazing smells happening around the house that excited my senses as a young boy.

Each day was so excruciatingly long, these few days in the final countdown to Christmas. Because when Christmas finally arrives, finally, finally, finally, after such a long wait we came to open the presents under the tree and that, that’s what Christmas was all about for me. Opening presents. Wow, that was an amazing time. With presents under the tree, that’s what Christmas is all about.

I remember one year getting a fishing rod. That was really exciting. And another year a sheriff’s outfit, you know with the little felt hat and the badge and the pretend holster with pistols on either side. Each year my parents seemed to manage to choose some presents that, for me, really hit the spot.

They knew who I was and somehow, miraculously, they thought about it and just bought these presents that, well they were me. They were just what a little boy wanted. All though mum, if you’re listening, I’m still waiting for the slot car set. They never bought me a slot car set. I don’t know why, they just never got around to it.

Anyhow, we weren’t a particularly wealthy family. Dad had a good job but it wasn’t the value of the presents that counted. It was the fact that they were especially for me. Of course now, you grow up and you become an adult and the presents don’t matter so much anymore.

I’m not one for presents these days, I’d be quite happy to see others open theirs but I’m happy not to receive anything at all ’cause that’s just me. And I guess we’ve all been on the receiving end of a present that’s completely inappropriate – that cheap tie or the bottle of aftershave that ooh, or that box of monogrammed hankies.

Or if you’re a woman, what do we buy a woman when we just don’t know what to buy and we think, ‘oh it’s too hard’. Some cheap earrings or a scarf, you know the sort of thing, or something completely useless for the kitchen that she’s never ever going to use.

And you look at it and you smile and you make fuss and you thank the person but inside you’re thinking, ‘What a complete waste of money and time that was. What a waste. I’m just going to throw this thing in the cupboard or in the drawer and never use it. And then, a few months later I’m going to have a clean out and it will end up in the rubbish or the trash depending on what part of the world you live in.’

And that’s it. My immediate reaction to those sorts of Christmas presents is, ‘Why didn’t you give this money that you spent on this useless present to the poor. Why didn’t you buy food or clothes for someone who really needed it instead?’

It’s not just the present is useless to us and that it’s a waste. You know what hurts most about that sort of present, it’s that the person hasn’t bothered to stop and think about it. They haven’t taken the trouble or the effort to think about who we are and what we’re into and what we’d like and what we don’t like.

They’ve just bought something because they felt they had to and so it’s like this present, this thing that was supposed to bless you. It’s more of an insult than a blessing. A slap in the face; a put down that says I don’t care enough about you or think enough of you to bother to put any effort or time into getting you something that you’d really like.

So, the old saying ‘It’s the thought that counts’ is absolutely true. Nothing to do with the value of the present, everything to do with what the present says about the relationship between the giver and the receiver.

Christmas has always been about presents. The very first Christmas, of course, it wasn’t called Christmas. There was no great holiday. There was no great celebration. The shops weren’t lit up. There were no Christmas catalogues in the letter boxes around Jerusalem and Bethlehem.

In many ways it was a day like any other day. It was a night like any other night. Of course at the time there was a great disruption and dislocation because the Romans had decided to have a census. And this was before computers so people had to travel to their ancestral homes, that’s how they sorted the people out into families and tribes.

And they were staying in inns and in peoples houses and the place was packed to the rafters. But it was just an ordinary day in many respects. For all God’s chosen people, the nation of Israel, in many respects a day like any other day.

But out the back of one of the inns in Bethlehem a young woman, probably a teenager, Mary was having a baby out of wedlock. And this baby, Jesus the Son of God, was the very first Christmas present. Not a tie or a scarf or a bottle of cheap perfume or after shave or cufflinks or a cheap set of earrings. Or even a gold watch or a diamond necklace. No, the very first Christmas present was a person, the Son of God.

Now I struggle sometimes to imagine what goes on in God’s heart and in His mind, what He’s thinking and feeling. His thoughts aren’t our thoughts. His ways aren’t our ways. But imagine, imagine someone who has everything. Someone who can have anything he wants. Someone who can give anything he wants. Imagine how He must have planned that first Christmas present.

From the beginning of time, from before time even began He conceived this plan: this plan to give you and me a free will; a plan born out of such a great and mighty love that He would give us the free will to accept Him or reject Him, knowing full well that we would all reject Him. Knowing that it was only by doing this that He’d be able to tell us how much He loves us by giving us His Son.

Imagine the great and mighty Father heart of God as He looked down at His Son being born. Imagine what was going through His heart and His mind as He saw Jesus slip into this world the way you and I slipped into this world out back there in that smelly, dirty stable. The overwhelming joy at seeing God the Son become a human being just like you and me; the sweet sound of that first newborns cry in this world as He sucked His first chest full of air in and let it out as a cry.

And the deep pain at the knowledge of knowing what His Son would have to endure: the rejection; the ridicule; the beatings; the spitting; and those nails, those cruel nails on the cross. God the Father, my hunch is it was a bitter sweet time for Him but it’s an idea that had been in the making for an eternity – this first Christmas present, His one and only Son.

You know what they say, it’s the thought that counts.

©

Well just a few more sleeps to go until Christmas, just a few more. Isn’t it exciting? Come on, get in the spirit of things, it’s Christmas. Presents, celebration, time for a bit of break from work. Isn’t it fantastic?

Well, this may surprise you but the answer for so many people is, ‘No, there’s nothing fantastic’. And there are so many reasons for that. Some of the people listening to this program today are living in a war zone. Some have just lost a loved one. Some are watching their children starve.

Some are looking out at the gloom of a northern hemisphere winter wondering what there could possibly be to get excited about. Some are contemplating yet another Christmas completely alone. And some are just so tired and so exhausted that all they can see themselves doing this Christmas is kind of collapsing over the line.

You know in most places, most countries, most societies on planet earth that there’s a significant spike in the incidence of domestic violence over Christmas. I can’t begin to imagine why people live like that but many do. Almost without doubt there’s a woman listening to this program right now who’s contemplating another beating or worse from a man who’s supposed to love her more than any other person on this planet.

For many, many people, despite all the commercial hype, despite what all the religious people say, it’s a rocky road this road heading towards Christmas. Maybe that’s how you feel about Christmas. It’s a rocky road. You’ve been listening to this joker on the radio, last week and again this week on the program, talking about Christmas as being a time to receive the best of the best. God’s best. That’s what Christmas is about.

And instead of these messages gelling with you, they’re jarring with you. That can often be the way. I’ve had Christmases like that too; all these people telling me how wonderful Christmas should be and all these messages of hope and joy and presents and commercial hype. You know what they did for me? All they did was to amplify my pain. To point out to me how lonely I really was. How bad my life really was. How much everyone else seemed to have and how little I had.

Sometimes, as I said, we’re in a hopeless and desperate place. Other times its just more of a sense of tiredness and burn out and emptiness that just comes from living life the way we live our lives. Whatever it is Christmas can be a rocky road and when our rocky road doesn’t match the hoop la of Christmas, it’s so easy for us to conclude that, well Christmas mustn’t be for me.

God didn’t mean for this joy and this blessing to be for me. And that, that makes things much worse – much worse than if there’d be no Christmas at all. And I know there are so many, so many people listening to the program today around the world who are sitting there nodding. You know exactly what I’m talking about.

And so we’re going to spend a short time together today looking at Christmas from that place. From the place of being on that journey along a rocky road, not really understanding why we are where we are or where perhaps this road is leading us or what’s going to happen when we get there.

And the best way, the very best way that I know to do this is to look at Christmas through the eyes of some people on such a rocky road. In fact two people, a couple, an engaged couple, Mary and Joseph on a rocky road to that first Christmas.

You know, for many of us Christmas, well it’s a pantomime. You know, the little baby Jesus in the manger in the stable and as kids we played in these pantomimes and as adults we’ve seen all these pantomimes. And somehow in our heads we’ve reduced Christmas down to this nice little, soft, safe story. But lets take a look at the real thing, not through kids eyes and their understanding but through our eyes and an adult understanding.

Mary’s pregnant. She’s got a two week donkey ride from up north down to Bethlehem. Fantastic. They’re not married. Imagine, imagine the shame of not being married and she’s pregnant and they’re not staying in a five star hotel which has been booked on the internet. Joseph can’t ring ahead on his mobile phone on the two week donkey ride and make sure the room’s there.

So they’re walking along this rocky road. Think of Joseph. Let’s look at this whole Christmas thing through his eyes for a moment. He’s not married to Mary yet and she’s carrying someone else’s child. Okay she says it was God and not some other man. Yeah right.

And an angel appeared to him and told him it was so. So he’s accepted that but the lingering doubts and even if it is Gods child, it’s not his and this is his wife to be after all, the woman he loves and that hurts in any mans heart. Can you imagine how that’s hurting in his heart as he’s walking along this rocky road towards the first Christmas? And he’s the husband to be, the provider and the protector of this little family to be.

They’re travelling to Bethlehem by decree of the emperor for this Roman census. They don’t know what’s going to happen when they get there. Will they find somewhere to stay? Will Mary make it that far before she goes into labour? How am I going to provide for this little family that isn’t even my family yet? How am I going to make it all work and bring it all together and keep them safe and protect them?

And when this child is born, will I be able to love it as though it were my own? Will I be able to find it in my heart to love this child like that? All these thoughts and ‘what ifs’ and concerns and worries are swilling around inside him as he walks alongside that donkey carrying his pregnant bride to be along this rocky road.

And Mary, all Mary could think about is the baby inside her. It’s so uncomfortable on the back of this donkey hour after hour, day after day. Are her waters going to break? Could be any minute you know. They’re in the middle of nowhere. Where would she have the baby? What’s going to happen? Is it going to hurt? It could happen any day now, any moment.

All those promises from God, the glory of an angel appearing to her, well that was great back then but here I am, due any minute, sitting on the back of a smelly uncomfortable donkey on a road to goodness knows where. If God is God, if this is His Son I’m carrying inside me, what a way to treat me. How can it possibly be true?

That was it, the rocky road towards the first Christmas. Not a safe comfortable little pantomime but a tough, real life story that ended with no room in the inn, and a smelly, disgusting, draughty stable to have a baby and surrounded by smelly, disgusting farm animals. In that place where you had to be careful where you put your foot down.

And we sit here in the dung heap of our lives, it feels like that smelly stable sometimes. And it feels like the glory and the presence of God just doesn’t belong in this place but it was into such a place that Gods own Son was born. It was into such a place that the glory of the Lord burst forth in a way that no-one could ever have predicted or imagined.

It was into such a place that Jesus Christ, the Son of God came and there was a reason for that. Christmas is God telling us that He is on this rocky road with us. He is truly in this place with us. It is especially into such a place, such a life, that the glory of God is come. That’s what Christmas is about.

©

There’s something about going on a holiday, a change of scenery. And even, you know, when you’re travelling for work, it’s something I’ve done quite a lot over the years. It seems that Australia is a long way away from anywhere. So to fly to the US is anywhere between 15 and 25 hours, depending on exactly where you’re headed and the connections and the things that happen along the way.

And UK and Europe, well they’re even further. And some places I’ve been to in Africa have just taken an eternity to get to. And after a long journey, when you get to the other end, what you’re really hanging out for is just to get to your hotel room, have a long hot shower, lay down on a flat bed.

It doesn’t have to be an expensive hotel, it doesn’t have to be a flashy room, it doesn’t matter. It’s just about getting there knowing that there’s somewhere to lay your head and being able to have a wash. And all my years of travelling there have been only a couple of times when I reached my destination and discovered there was no room for me.

One time it was a 34 hour trip, door to door, from Sydney to Chicago. I was speaking at a IT conference and I arrived at the hotel and the man said, ‘I’m sorry sir, the computers are down. We don’t know when the rooms are going to be up, we don’t know which ones are clean, you’re just going to have to wait and the wait is at least 4 hours.’ I cannot begin to tell you how terrible that felt. I just wanted to go to my room but I couldn’t.

It’s a funny thing this sense of self that we have. It doesn’t matter, rich or poor, we all want a roof over our heads and somewhere to lay down our head to sleep, somewhere to call home. Many, many people in this world don’t have that. Many, many people listening to the program today don’t have that – just the simple basic things: food, water, sanitation, electricity. Most of the people alive on this planet don’t have all of those things and yet our simple desire is to have them.

And it seems that Christmas has grown to this thing that’s all about having … having so much more; the advertising and the hype and the hoop la and the expectations. Young people these days have such incredibly high expectations about Christmas presents and holidays. It’s almost as though, well, it’s almost as though the message we’re sending out is that Christmas is only for those who can afford it. It seems that Santa Claus doesn’t manage to get to the kids in really poor places on the planet. Funny how that works. I wonder why that is.

I was sharing with you earlier about the dejection of a long trip and not being able to get into a hotel room. I was really annoyed. I mean it was such a great inconvenience until one day. One day I was standing in the middle of a village in Central India.

The people were living in grass huts. They had no water. They had no sanitation. They had no electricity. I met a man, an old man, with pus filled sores up and down his legs but it turned out he was only a couple of years older than I was. I could have sworn he was much, much older.

I stood there in the middle of this village and it was all I could do not to weep at the poverty that surrounded me. I went back to my rather humble lodgings. I’d been grumbling about the fact there were no showers there, only taps with buckets to wash with. And all of a sudden those taps and those buckets were looking pretty good.

And God reminded me that time, years before when I’ve been so cranky about a four hour delay on my room in Chicago after a mere 34 hour travel. So let’s begin to imagine the disappointment of Joseph and Mary when they arrived in Bethlehem.

A couple of weeks on the road, Mary’s heavily pregnant, an uncomfortable donkey ride. And they arrived in a place that’s packed to the rafters with people. Let’s take a look at it together. It comes from Luke chapter 2, verses 1 to 7:

“In those days a decree went out from the Emperor Augustus that all the world should be registered. This was the first registration and was taken while Quirinius was governor of Syria. All went to their own towns to be registered”

“Joseph also went from the town of Nazareth in Galilee to Judea to the city of David called Bethlehem because he was descended from the house and family of David. He went to be registered with Mary to whom he was engaged and who was expecting a child.”

“While they were there the time came for her to deliver the child and she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in bands of cloth and laid him in a manger because there was no place for them in the inn.”

I was just going to speak at some IT conference for a few days in Chicago. But Joseph and Mary, they were on a journey for God. They must have thinking to themselves, ‘What rotten timing. Here’s Mary about to have a baby and the emperor decrees a census’.

Probably a couple of weeks walk from Nazareth to Bethlehem. Not easy on the back of a donkey for a heavily pregnant girl. Wondering the whole way where will they stay when they got there. Will there be room for them? Would there be somewhere safe and clean and comfortable for her to give birth to her baby?

She was, at least according to the angel, carrying who? Gods Son. ‘Ah, it will be fine. It’ll be okay.’ They must have been thinking and chatting between one another on that long road from Nazareth to Bethlehem. ‘God will look after us, I mean its Gods Son.’

‘Probably, you know, probably what He’s going to do Joseph, there’ll be a miracle, it will happen and someone will give us this great place to stay and it will all work out. I mean its Gods Son. That would be what God would do, right?’

And they get to Bethlehem and nothing. They go to one inn. They go to another inn. They go to this lodging house and that lodging house. They looked everywhere – nothing. And just because one inn keeper took pity on them did they even get into a stable.

I think back to that day I was sitting in that hotel foyer in Chicago and how dejected and grumpy I was after 34 hours travel and this 4 hour delay to my comfortable hotel room. And I compare that to Mary, this woman carrying Gods Son, pregnant, about to give birth after 2 weeks uncomfortable journey. I cannot imagine what a disappointment that first Christmas would have been to her. Giving birth in a stable? God’s Son? What was He thinking?

For many of us Christmas can feel something of a disappointment. We look at our surroundings and our circumstances and all that’s going on and we look at Christmas and it feels like such a disappointment. But let me take you back into Mary’s disappointment just a moment.

Because it was in the midst of this disappointment and the heaviness of her heart that Jesus, the Son of God, was born – right into that place with her. And it’s in the middle of our disappointment and our circumstances and our heaviness of heart that Jesus, the Son of God, comes to meet us.

Having become one of us, understanding what it is to be human, travelling through all sorts of the things that you and I travel through and much, much more. Jesus is the one that comes to us and says,

“Come to me all that are weary and carrying heavy burdens, I will give you rest. Take my yoke upon you, learn from me. I’m gentle, I’m humble in heart and you will find rest for your souls for my yoke is easy and my burden is light.”

Christmas may well be a disappointment but Christ isn’t. He came amidst all that disappointment. He came for you and me. That’s what Christmas is all about.

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