Christmas isn't a wash-out.

This year I put up a Christmas decoration in my front garden. I made it from some old laminated chipboard. I carefully painted Mary in her traditional blue outfit (Wilko’s Ocean Spray) and Jesus wrapped in swaddling bands using brilliant white gloss (Wickes) I looked for a three-quarters used tin of something in green for Joseph’s cloak but nowhere amongst the 23 almost empty paint tins I’ve saved for touch-up jobs, was there a suitable shade. I eventually decided I could mix Mary’s blue with some yellow poster paint. Moments later Joseph had a green coat. An hour later it rained and Joseph had a brown laminated wood grain coat. Jesus remained strong.
This year hasn’t been one of the happiest I’ve had but it hasn’t been a total washout. Despite the sadness, Jesus has remained strong.
At the base of my model I have the word ‘joy’ and at the base of my life the same word rings out. I believe it is possible to still have joy even when some of life’s colours fade. The old carol talks about the coming of the Saviour being tidings of comfort and joy. This year I have known the Saviour bring both into my life.

When should you put up/take down the tree?

I put my Christmas tree up on December 5th. You have to slot all the little colour coded branches into the little numbered slots which don't correspond to the colours at all. It's a painstaking business even before you start decorating it.
Because my tree goes in the corner of the room I usually don't add the branches round the back, instead I put them between the branches already fixed in place at the front in order to give the tree some fullness. Occasionally I fasten these with parcel ties but when I get fed up I just balance them. I add the lights next and use a net because it's easier. and remember that if you are using a light net, you needed to put the tinsel on first. Finally I hang baubles and scented angels who no longer smell. This year having completed my task some two and a half hours after beginning it, I got the vacuum cleaner out to hoover up the hundreds of green bits which had dropped from the synthetic tree. It's quite a good vacuum cleaner so when I ran over the wire to the lights, it sucked it up and began wrapping it round the rotating brushes. I tried to stamp on the off lever but only managed to hit the handle release and lie the hoover flat on the floor where it continued to wrap the wire round its spinning brushes. By the time I had managed to stand on the off switch, the tree was no longer up and the lights were no longer on.
It made me reflect on how much Christmas sucks people's resources and topples their ideals. 
It's not what's supposed to happen at Christmas but if you get the true meaning all tangled up in the whirr and noise of trying to keep things organised, I'm afraid it's a likely consequence. 
The first Christmas wasn't tidy. There was no room to stay in and no cot to sleep in. The floor was probably a mess and quite likely worse things than plastic green bits were strewn across it. But the thing about Christmas is that light came down. Not by accident, but very deliberately. Jesus is the light of the world, he came down to earth to untangle the mess we're in. I love Christmas even when I take my tree down as soon as I've put it up. I know the light of the world has shone in my heart and it means I understand the happiness of Christmas every day of the year.

Christmas isn't a wash-out

 

This year I made a Christmas decoration for my front garden, using an old piece of laminated chipboard. I carefully painted Mary in her traditional blue outfit (Wilko's Ocean Spray) and Jesus wrapped in swaddling bands using brilliant white gloss (Wickes) I looked for a threequarters used tin of something in green for Joseph but as I don't like the colour green I hadn't got one amongst the other 23 almost empty paint tins I've saved for when I needed to touch-up. Resourceful as ever, I mixed Mary's blue with some yellow poster paint and hey-presto Joseph had a lovely green cloak. He had a lovely green coat until it rained through the night. In the morning Joseph had a nice brown laminate wood cloak. Mary and Jesus remained strong.

I've not much enjoyed this year since March and when I was told  it would be against the law to enjoy our normal 10 household Christmas, I was both sad and angry. So much of what matters to me, seems to have been washed away by fear this year.

But when I looked at my garden picture with the hopeful "JOY" that I'd jig-sawed out of the off-cut of my laminate board, I realised afresh that Christmas isn't a wash out this year, The child who came to show us the love and compassion of God, is still light in the darkness, hope in the despair, comfort in the loneliness, calm in the frustration. Jesus was distanced from God for 33 years so we could be close to him always. I pray that the peace of God will be in our hearts this weird Christmas.   

Plenty of room

Three of us were travelling to London by car this week and my friend let me go in the front seat. I always feel bad when other people are crushed in the back so I asked her if she had plenty of  room for her legs. It's a Mercedes and she assured me she had room. I also had more than enough room, as I have short legs to go with my short body. In an effort to make her journey even more comfortable I decided I would move my seat forward anyway. I pulled the lever and shot backwards, crushing her ankles under my seat and ramming the back of it into her knees. The pain of no longer having plenty of room resulted in a loud scream. Strangely enough, it made me think of Christmas. There should have been room in Bethlehem for a heavily pregnant woman on the day her baby was due, but unfortunately somebody had decided to crush a lot of people into the town. I don't know if Mary screamed when Jesus was born in the stable but I do know she could have done with a more generous room. Jesus was restricted from the word go. He was God and he had always had plenty of room, but when he came to earth to save people from their sins, he was scrunched into a womb, squeezed into a stable, nailed to a cross and sealed in a tomb. After three days he threw off the restrictions and brought life and immortality to anyone who would like to ditch the constraints of mortality and live a spacious life here, and in eternity.

Mind your head

I was in Leamington Spa today. I am 5 feet 2 inches tall. The sign on this bridge wasn't all that relevant to me. I don't actually think it was relevant to anybody shorter than 6 ft 6 inches. I suppose if you are 6ft 6" you will mind your head on most things. Granted walking into a metal bridge would be quite unpleasant but it isn't disguised or anything. I once banged my head really hard on the underside of a table. I had bent down to pick up a fork and the arm of my glasses which were dangling on a string round my neck, went up my left nostril. Afraid that the plastic appendage would pierce my nasal wall and enter my brain, I jerked my head upwards with force. I should have minded my head on that table. Unfortunately nobody had left me a note.
Having your glasses on a string round your neck is both a blessing and a curse. I tried to open a door with my glasses the other day. I mistook them for the pass on my lanyard and was waving them at the electronic sensor and wondering why the door didn't open.
Some people think faith isn't all that relevant to them. It's OK for needy people who require a crutch or weak people who require an excuse but they don't really have much use for it. But there may come a day when you need help opening a door and if you wave the wrong thing at it, you might find it stays closed. In John 10 Jesus says this, "I am the door. If anyone enters by me, he will be saved, and will go in and out and find good pastures. I have come so that you may have life and have it more abundantly."  I might not walk tall enough to bang my head on a bridge, but I do walk tall in the abundant life I've found in Jesus.

Lost Art

Today a cleaner threw out an £8,000  art work by Sala Murat because it was near a bin in the hotel where an auction of expensive art had just taken place.
She was just doing her job and the "art work" was made out of newspaper and and cardboard and cookie pieces scattered across the floor, so who could blame her?
Thirteen years ago another cleaner swept away Damien Hirst's collection of beer bottles, coffee cups and overflowing ashtrays, which he was exhibiting in a London gallery.
People don't always recognise what a thing is worth when it looks like a mangled mess.
Jesus Christ was beaten to a pulp and hung naked on a cross. Many people think he should be discarded. For me the crucifixion is a thing of worth and of beauty. Jesus carried my selfishness and wrong doing away there and bought me salvation and eternal life.
I know it was a mess, but please at least look at it before you trash it.

Baubles

I was once told that if you cut yourself on a Christmas tree bauble you would never stop bleeding. It may have been a lie but I've never dared to try it. I did however slice my finger ends on a headlight housing this week and they seem to leak blood regularly for the next several days. I got in the car on Friday and was not pleased that the previous occupant had got ketchup on the steering wheel. They hadn't. 

I was also told that if water which you have boiled eggs in, gets on your skin, it will give you warts. That isn't true in my experience. People don't seem to eat boiled eggs much any more which I think is a sad shame. I saw some very nice egg cups the other day and it filled me with regret that I didn't need them, as I could have put them on my Christmas list and helped my family with their present shopping. 
Today I made use of the very efficient online "click and collect" facility at Argos. I put the item number in my phone, left the phone on the table and headed off to town. It wasn't all that efficient. The assistant was marvelously helpful and urged me to pay in installments and spread the cost. I explained that I could pay in full. He continued to suggest I pay in installments. The APR is 29.9% no wonder he wanted me to pay in installments.
I thought about  Christmas. Jesus didn't pay in installments. In the Bible,the writer to the Hebrew people explained it like this  "Every priest goes to work at the altar each day, offers the same old sacrifices year in, year out, and never makes a dent in the sin problem. As a priest, Christ made a single sacrifice for sins, and that was it! Then he sat down right beside God and waited for his enemies to cave in. It was a perfect sacrifice by a perfect person to perfect some very imperfect people. By that single offering, he did everything that needed to be done for everyone who takes part in the purifying process." 

Fairy Lights

Fairy Lights

Why are lights that flash off and on and off in random epilepsy inducing sequences, called fairy lights?
Who ever saw a fairy using lights? Come to that who ever saw a fairy?
Angels - I can vouch for there being angels, but fairies?
Warmest greetings? Not sure what they are. I had mulled berry non alcoholic punch the other day, it was tepid and horrible and we gave it out to a lot of unsuspecting festive revelers. Maybe that was a warmest greeting - if so you can keep it.
Is it just when you get older that you become disappointed in things because they don't live up to your expectations or memories? One thing that lives up to both my expectations and memories, is the Christmas story.  I have warmest memories about my first part in a Christmas play when I was six. I had the inauspicious line "Come children." I delivered it in my best Manchester accent. I was in Lewisham, South East London at the time and it brought the house down.
The first Christmas brought joy to shepherds and angels and wise men and people of the royal line who had almost forgotten their genealogy.
This Christmas brings joy to me. Because Jesus came, I have rediscovered my royal lineage. I was designed to be the child of a king, a child of God, and I have discovered that I feature on the royal role call because Jesus came to earth and died to forgive me of the things that might have had me crossed off the list.
There were no flashing lights and no particular warm feelings inside. I believed in Jesus. I said I was sorry for my sin, I found God and I discovered life. I recommend the truth of the Christmas story for lighting up your Christmas.