Advent - Does Christmas make sense? ...

Friday, Dec 17, 2010. Does Christmas make sense? Does it make sense to me? Is it a nice family celebration? Some time to get take some days off from work? Is it a time to go skiing, the time to have a big new year party? What is Christmas for me? Does it make sense?

Make sense of Christmas …

How do you look at the story about God coming into the world, the story of Jesus? Is it a strange story to you or a well-known story, one you have known since early childhood? Is it something which sounds a little crazy to you, perhaps like a phantastic story …?

For me I had several phases in my own idea about Christmas. It used to be a time where schools and universities stop. Then, there are free days to do what ever you did not find time to do in the busy time of November and December.

But then I had a time when I started to look at Jesus more sincerely. I realized, that he is in fact an interesting guy. The person Jesus, as it is acting and talking in the New Testament, the second part of the bible, shows a breathtaking behaviour. He is just different. He is creative, he is humble, he is weak, he is very stong with respect to following faith. He is smart, but without any type of deceitfulness. He ist completely trustworthy.

Open Doors at Christmas …

Open your doors! That is one of the key commands which are parts of songs and citations during the advent time and at Christmas. Open the doors of your heart. It could be, that we need to open the doors of our heart to make sense of Christmas. We need to open our ears to the message of the bible, to the message of a special kind of peace, the peace with God. When we open the doors of our heart, it is possible that we understand, what God tells us.

Life is about communication. Communication needs the will and the ability to talk and to listen. It needs an understanding of the language of the other person. The language of God is the language of the story of Christmas, the language of the story of easter and pentacost. It is a language full of images, a language written in terms of events. It is a language which tries to reach our heart and our mind, both of them.

Do you have an open heart this year around Christmas? An open heart for other people. An open heart for God and for his words, which try to reach all of us, every day? I want to be a person with an open heart, yes, I do. ... more texts