‘ "She will give birth to a son, and you are to give him the name Jesus, because he will save his people from their sins." All this took place to fulfil what the Lord had said through the prophet: “The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means "God with us").’ (Matthew 1:21-23.)
January – yuck. Christmas is over and the dark nights are no longer cosy with fairy lights and candles, just long, dark and cold.
To make it worse, we lumber ourselves with crazy resolutions that we know in advance we’ll break and feel guilty about.
But, (greet this fact with hallelujahs and angel choirs), the Christmas story isn’t just for Christmas!
This achingly gentle story of love and hope is for cold, dark Januarys. It’s for people who are facing unemployment or home repossession.
Happy ever after?
It’s for the mother in Zimbabwe watching her daughter die painfully from cholera, for the little boy in DRC whose whole life until now has been spent fleeing from men with guns and machetes. For the father who just can’t earn enough to put food on the table.
It’s not a warm and fuzzy fairy story of happily ever after, but it’s real and true and it transforms everything.
So this New Year, why not make some resolutions in the light of this? Reflect again on the Christmas story as you think about the year ahead.
New Year's resolutions are notoriously difficult to stick to, so why not get together with a group of people, your neighbours, family or home group, and make a resolution together?
Resolve
And if your resolutions are about making a difference in your community or church, or making life easier for your family - rather than about yourself losing a few pounds or exercising more - they might be easier to stick to.
Remember that the Christmas story is for you and it’s for now, breathing hope into this very moment. And the air itself is pulsing with God’s possibility and his life. Doesn’t that make the beginning of the year seem like a good place to be?
And if we break our New Year’s resolutions or are finding it just too hard to be excited about the start of another year, thank God that grace came down at Christmas.