(by Kim Thoday)

It’s about having a good time. It’s about giving and receiving presents. But it’s a whole lot more than that. It’s about our great God who came to this world in the form of a little baby called Jesus. It’s about our God who could see that things weren’t really going so well on earth, so he sent his son Jesus to fix things up.

Christmas time is a hard time for a lot of people, because behind all the decorations, Christmas trees and overdrawn bank accounts, are people struggling with life. In life we face a lot of storms: the pressures of work, unemployment, bringing up kids, school work, relationship problems, people let us down and we let ourselves down. It’s hard to trust any more. Christmas is about the fact that God comes to us in the storms of life and helps us meet the challenges and become better people because of the storms. Christmas is about the rebirth of trust into the world.

Christmas reminds me of September 11. The terrorist strikes on the world trade centre were a powerful reminder to me of Christmas. It was a storm of a terrible evil and yet we learned that the Christmas story of love and hope was true even there. We saw many powerful examples of humility, resilience and love expressed toward others. Who can forget the image of Father Michael Judge, the 68-year-old chaplain to the New York Firefighters, as rescue workers carried his ash-covered body out from the wreckage. Upon hearing news of the attacks, Father Michael rushed from his home to Ground Zero, to the place of destruction and tragedy. He plunged into the carnage of blood and bodies to offer counsel, to pray and to administer the Last Rites. But as he knelt over a dying officer, as he took off his hat to pray, Michael became another fatality as his body was crushed in a sudden fall of rubble and debris. Michael Judge went into the storm of life, like God comes to us in the storm of life to comfort, to care, to heal and to give us strength. Michael paid for that love with his own life, like Jesus would pay with his own life, for his love of each of us. That’s how much God loves you. He was prepared to give his own life so that we can have life. And that is how much we can trust God.

Just remember that there is an eye to every storm. Within every storm that comes our way in life, there lies hidden the resources for us to become better people and to make a difference in this world. At the eye of a storm is a space of calm, peace and well-being. The “I” of the storm is God. At the eye of the storm lies the Christmas message that evil will in the end by conquered by good. Even the goodness and innocence of a little baby has the power to overcome the greatest storms of life. That is the miracle of Christmas. And I’ve seen that miracle work out in people’s lives time and again. Once I worked with a 19 year old guy with massive problems. He hated himself and he hated the world. He especially hated older men. It took me ages just to earn enough trust to be able to talk to him without being dismissed or abused. Eventually I got to find out that he’d been kicked out of every school he’d ever been to, that he had a mother who was a drug addict and that he was beginning to head that way himself. One day as we walked through the grounds of his housing estate he broke down in a fit of anger and tears about the way he had been abused as a child by his father. And then he admitted that he hated himself because he was becoming like his father in his hatred and treatment of other people. The first step had been taken in that young man’s life on the road to recovery. Sometimes in the storm of life we just need someone to listen and to trust (the eye of the storm).

Now I have to say that the road to recovery was not an easy one. But to cut a long story short, that young man is now nearly thirty years of age. He has a wife and children and he now works as a youth worker for a community group. You see he found the true meaning of Christmas. The eye of the storm found him. And he gave his life to Jesus Christ. He asked Jesus, the I of the storm, to become the facilitator of his life. He came to see that God does not judge us or condemn us because of our problems. We are not the sum of our problems. God loves us in spite of the things we do wrong. God loves us even before we recognise we have problems. God loves us in the process of solving our problems. And God continues to love us when we’ve overcome our problems. And furthermore, God hangs in there when we stuff up and go back into those problems. In fact, the stories about Jesus show us that the only times God gets angry with us is when we think we haven’t got problems and everyone else is to blame. You see, the bottom line is, that my friend realised that God loves us so much that he sent his Son Jesus to be with us in the storms of life. He has experienced that we can trust God for all our needs. If you haven’t already, invite Jesus into your life this Christmas. That’s what Christmas is really about.

Blessings in Jesus’ name

Kim Thoday, Hewett Community Church of Christ, South Australia

http://www.hewett.org,au