In those days a decree went out from Caesar Augustus that all the world should be registered. 2 This was the first registration when Quirinius was governor of Syria. 3 And all went to be registered, each to his own town. 4 And Joseph also went up from Galilee, from the town of Nazareth, to Judea, to the city of David, which is called Bethlehem, because he was of the house and lineage of David, 5 to be registered with Mary, his betrothed, who was with child. 6 And while they were there, the time came for her to give birth. 7 And she gave birth to her firstborn son and wrapped him in swaddling cloths and laid him in a manger, because there was no place for them in the inn.
Luke 2:1-7
It is sometimes thought - and said - that the woes and turmoil in the world two thousand years after the coming of the Prince of Peace make the message of Christmas meaningless, and its continuing celebration a pointless farce, with meaning only for non-religious sentiment and squalid commercialisation.
But we may remind those who think thus that there is a 'hiddenness' in the message and meaning of Christmas as there is in the gospel as a whole, to which men cannot come, save by humble and childlike faith. One carol puts it thus:
How silently, how silently,
The wondrous gift is given;
So God imparts to human hearts
The blessings of His heaven.
We need not be surprised, then, if the world passes off with a shrug the Christmas message; it has always done so, since the first generation failed to see any significance in the unobtrusive lowliness of a baby's birth in a manger long ago. How should it know, except by faith, that this was the 'weakness' of God that was to prove stronger than men. How should it know, either, that this seemingly ordinary happening, of no conceivable importance to the world of men, should prove to be the link that binds earth to heaven eternally, and believers in Him to one another in a fellowship of love and caring that has become dearer than anything else on earth to those who have experienced it.
It is this fellowship that we, who love Him, enjoy and rejoice in, not indeed at Christmas time only, but all the time, for His coming was once for all and for ever, establishing a permanently enduring bond of reconciliation and peace in which we share without interruption, with Him and with one another, the blessings of God's love and grace.
Nor does the incontrovertible grimness of the world situation diminish, but rather accentuate, the reality of the fellowship that was 'born' for us on the first Christmas Day; for we are 'born' thereby into a world for whose values of truth, beauty and love the hearts of men are longing and yearning, though they do not suspect that it exists.
Please God some may catch a glimpse of it in the warmth of love and caring that they see in the fellowship of the Church, and be drawn into it, and into Him who is its life and its deepest joy.