I was invited back again to do Thought for the Day on BBC Radio and Coventry, you can listen to it here - or read the transcript below.
Today is Epiphany – the day when the church traditionally celebrates the visit of the wise men to Jesus. It’s also the 12thday of Christmas, the end of the Christmas season, and when most people take down their decorations.
In our house, it’s the only day in the year when the beautiful wooden nativity set that I have, looks complete. My mum was a Sunday school teacher, and alongside insisting I played Gabriel every year, because Gabriel was a boy and I was the only boy she could bribe to do it - she was also ways very strict about the nativity set. She insisted that each of the characters, including the shepherds, Mary and Joseph and even Jesus needed to journey from various parts of the house and only reach the stable on their appropriate day. Because my mum is a little forgetful at times, this often led to hours of searching on Christmas day because she had hidden the baby Jesus and then forgotten where she’d put Him!
As I looked at my set, complete this morning, I thought about the fact that all of them there, not just the wise men who we think about today - went on journeys to that stable. Before they met Jesus, they had long, perhaps at times, difficult journeys ahead of them.
Our lives too can feel like a bit of a journey. It’s a well worn analogy but we often say when times are hard, that it feels like a bit of an uphill struggle. As we begin this new year, I wonder how your life feels at the moment? For me, if I’m honest, life feels fairly easy right now– I’m grateful for that, and very aware that there have been times, not that long ago, when that’s not been the case.
When I used to go cycling, a good number of years ago now, I remember when someone came with me, the whole journey felt so much better. It wasn’t necessarily that the hills were any easier to climb, or that I went faster as I went down the other side – but it was certainly better.
My own life journey has been greatly improved because of Jesus journeying with me.
It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’ve come from or what you’ve done; what you think of God, yourself or even what others think of you –Just as all those in that stable journeyed to Jesus, he longs for us to journey to Him, and to know Him walking with us as we journey on.
Many of us, by now, will be back at our places of work, or back into the normal rhythms of life – with Christmas and New year quickly becoming a distant memory. Perhaps a few of us have already given up on the New Year’s resolutions, re-hit the chocolate and lost our gym membership cards!
Before the season ends completely on this 12thday of Christmas and before you spend a few hours looking for somewhere to put those 12 drummers drumming that have almost certainly been delivered this morning – I’d love to invite you stop, and find a little more than the moment of peace we’ve had together and to journey to that stable once more – because to paraphrase a famous advert, Jesus is not just for Christmas, He loves you and He longs to be involved in the whole of your journey.
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