When do you put up your Christmas tree? It’s that time of year…a time of tinsel and fairy lights, the season of streets crowded with shoppers, the smell of cinnamon and the sound of jingle bells…
For Christians it can be of a balance – in the shops we have been looking forward to Christmas since the beginning of October! And yet we are to patiently wait during the time of Advent – a time of watching, waiting. A time which is quite literally a pregnant pause
looking forward to Christmas, when we celebrate God being with us
The birth of Jesus – with all the great Christmas carols that speak of glad tidings and the birth of a new era when we can all rejoice and share the good news
It’s also that time of year when we don’t look too far, when we don’t lift our eyes too high when we are scurrying about (why does it always feel like it’s all at the last minute?!) lest we lay eyes on someone who is not
Who does not fit with all the tinsel, lights and shiny plastic snow scenes. Someone who isn’t jolly, who maybe looks a little lost, for whom this season is not a time to rejoice but rather to retreat…
We don’t really want to see those who will spoil our mood.
And yet, the marginalized, the lost, the widow, the orphan… the littlest and the least are the very people Jesus came to walk amongst. And so we should be alongside.
Everyone needs a stable influence
Revd Kyla Sørensen