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Christmas is for Dark Places – John 1

“Rachel Weeping”
Rachel Weeping For Her Children.
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In the light of the news from America you may be asking, What can Christmas possibly say to Newtown, Connecticut?  Isn’t Christmas now inappropriate?  How can we dare to teach these children about the joys of Christmas when children just like them were gunned down in a school on Friday?  After all that’s happened, how can talk of Christmas go on?  After these events Christmas has been cancelled for scores of families.  How can we speak of Christmas??

I suggest to you that the real question is: How can we not??  How can we NOT speak of Christmas when the evil and suffering of this world is unmasked in such a horrific way?  How can we NOT speak of Christmas?  Christmas is FOR Newtown, Connecticut.  Christmas is precisely FOR this evil and suffering world.

If we feel that Christmas doesn’t fit with the horrors of Friday’s shooting, I suggest we’re thinking about the wrong Christmas. I hope you know that Christmas is NOT about elves and tinsel and warm cocoa and X-Factor number ones.  It is NOT about wandering blank-eyed through shopping malls and maxxing out the credit cards. It’s not even about sweet Carols and even sweeter Nativity plays. There is NOTHING sweet about the real Christmas.  There is NOTHING sentimental about the true Christmas story.

Matthew chapter 2, verse 16:

16 When Herod realised that he had been outwitted by the Magi, he was furious, and he gave orders to kill all the boys in Bethlehem and its vicinity who were two years old and under… 17 Then what was said through the prophet Jeremiah was fulfilled: 18 "A voice is heard in [the region of] Ramah, weeping and great mourning, Rachel weeping for her children and refusing to be comforted, because they are no more." {Jer. 31:15}

That’s the real Christmas. Christmas happens in the dark...

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1 thought on “Christmas is for Dark Places – John 1

  1. Pingback: It’s beginning to look a lot like sermon prep… | Christ the Truth

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