Jesus comes
I didn't have much to say today - given that yesterday I did precisely nothing and spent nearly all day in bed watching telly . So I've been reading back over some previous years blog posts in an attempt to find some inspiration. Back in 2012 I wrote for the first time about my experience with depression - and that particular blog provoked a huge reaction amongst my friends, many of whom stepped out of the shadows to share their own experience for the first time. Nine years later ( I started taking the pills in 2011) I'm still on a daily dose of anti-depressants. As far as I'm concerned I'll probably be on them for the rest of my life. They have definitely made a huge difference to me and to my family. I most certainly would not have survived lockdown without them.
This year everyone has come under tremendous pressure one way or another. We have either been forced to stay at home with kids and partners and we have gone stir crazy just having to live together in unrelenting proximity for weeks and months on end. Or we have been going to work through the whole thing and feeling the pressure of trying to keep going through swathes of covid regulations - nightmare. Or we have lost work and income and are feeling the stress of an uncertain employment future. Or we are concerned about Brexit on top of all of that. We are worried about relatives, concerned about schools, fearful for the NHS, fed up with all of it and sceptical about any governments ability to get a grip. It's not surprising that many of us have had days/weeks/months/a year of struggles with our mental health.
I suspect that this year more than any other we might all have had the slightest glimpse into what it might have felt like to be Mary and Joseph. They too were living in fear of their lives in wildly uncertain times. Let's remember that they had no antibiotics, no health service. A carpenters cut could become infected and kill in a matter of days. Childbirth took the lives of a high percentage of mothers. It was a worrying, economically unstable, physically dangerous time to be alive. The Romans imposed all sorts of rules and regulations on the people - taxes and censuses and all sorts - which nobody wanted but everyone had to obey. We might not like the idea of the state controlling our lives - but compared to living under dictatorial and brutal occupying force.... we have no idea. The Romans showed scant regard for the religious sensibilities of the Jews and must have been a constant offense as they worshipped their own gods and imposed their own views. Caesar wanted to be worshipped as a god. It must have all seemed utterly hopeless and depressing.
But it is into such a time as this that Jesus came.
It is into such times as these that Jesus comes.
He comes to the furloughed and the self- isolating. He comes to the bankrupt and the unemployed. He comes to the fearful and the ill. To the stressed ICU nurse and the longsuffering shelf stacker and the overlooked classroom assistant. But He doesn't come on a white horse with a magic wand to grant our hearts desires and make it all better. He comes to be with us in it. He comes as one of us to lead us out of it.
He doesnt bring solutions. He IS the solution.
I think the answer to all the doom and gloom and very real difficulties of 2020 is to come and worship this baby in a manger. This divine child. Who came to live and walk and listen and commune with His Father in our midst. And to die for us so that ultimately He can present us to the Father spotless and without blemish, made perfect and whole, healed and holy. Worship him and follow Him. Who else is there to turn to? He is the only one who has defeated death and has all things under His feet. 9 years ago I was in a pit of despair. Now I'm not. And its not because of the pills I'm taking, its because I followed Jesus who led me to the GP and in so doing lifted me out of the pit and re-set my feet on a rock. Whatever you are in, He can take you through. And that is the message of Christmas.
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