Is Christmas relevant? ...

Monday, Dec 22, 2014. Is Christmas relevant for you? Is it relevant for your personal life, for your thoughts, for your feelings, for your decisions? Let us think for a moment about what Christmas is meant to be about!

What does it mean to us? …

Most of us celebrate Christmas, because it is there - and because it is a nice occasion to be with the family, to step out of the usual routine, to get some rest and some holiday. In this sense, Christmas has a meaning to us.

But what about the spiritual component of Christmas. What about the baby in the creche, the Jesus baby? Does that have a meaning to us?

I would say that Jesus has a meaning to most people in the sense of a sign of humanity. Christmas is a time of the year where we give most to charities and to other people. It is a time where we are reminded that there are those who have less - and we might want to help them. Christmas, in this sense, is a celebration of mercy, of a helping attitude. Love and forgiveness is somehow linked to all of this - though we might not be able to completely convert this into something real. It remains mostly with nice songs in the shopping malls.

A real encounter …

The meaning of Christmas as it is worked out in the New Testament is far beyond the worldly meaning. It is the celebration of the most important event of world history. This event is the most important event, since it is relevant to everyone of us. Jesus is born - a little baby, a very human baby. But he is also the son of God, he is God himself, coming to us.

Christmas only gains it true relevance, when this coming of God is one which reaches you, which reaches your mind and your heart. When he does not reach me, it is still relevant, but then I stay lost in space and time. Christmas is about being reached, about being found. He wants to find us - as we would like to find him!

There are many elements in the Christmas story. There are many elements in the life of Jesus. There will be those who touch you. In his sermons you will discover your life, and your hopes and desires, and your dreams, and then you yourself! His sermons, and the words of the apostles and evangelists, want to reach us - and suddenly we realize that it is God himself speaking to us. He is calling us to come to him, to be one of those who start to move, who hear these words: do not be afraid, who discover the child, which is so ordinary, and yet so special!

Christmas becomes relevant, when he reaches you! (RWEP) ... more texts