We have just spent the last 4 Sundays in Advent, a time of waiting and wanting for Christmas to come. This nation is well practice at waiting and wanting, in 2022 60 million people ordered online and had purchases delivered.
You’ll notice that this piece isn’t called the Christmas Contract, that’s because we didn’t enter an agreed exchange with God, where God would be incarnate if only we kept our side of the bargain. Your God and mine came to be with us at Christmas not to fulfil a contract but to fulfil a number of covenants going all the back to Abraham.
In the birth of Jesus Christ there is not clearer example of covenant. In the vulnerability of baby born into poverty, homeless and seeking asylum to two unwedded parents, we see God showing us a desire to be with us no matter what the circumstances. An unwavering desire to be with us at our best and our worst, to be with in good season and in bad and to be with now until eternity. This is where lives are liberated from transaction to transformation, where scarcity becomes abundance and where utility becomes beauty – this is where we meet Jesus.
This Christmas maybe we can be encouraged to start to relate to God as God relates to us with unconditional love, grace and generosity. Like all good gifts be sure try and share this with others, with yourself and all of creation.
Ben Sheridan
