How do you face the Christmas season when it doesn’t look the way it used to? Aycliffe LIFE Church has been thinking about this a lot lately. Someone we know will face his first Christmas in over 30 years without his wife.  Another will celebrate without the child she waited so long for and never held.  They had both had plans for Christmas, knew what was coming and now, this year, Christmas doesn’t look like Christmas at all.
Heartbreak and loss, loneliness and disappointment stand out in sharp contrast to the sparkly excitement of Christmas.
“Christmas in our society is often about families, and families are not always happy. If you’re facing a death or a divorce, the ‘empty chair syndrome’ becomes very real at this time of year.”
Christmas gets all glammed up, but at the heart of it all, it celebrates a very quiet moment. Christmas began with a little baby in a stable over 2000 years ago.  It started with two parents who were tired from a long journey and caught off guard that the baby would choose this particular moment to be born.
It wasn’t glamorous, and it certainly wasn’t shiny but it did mark the moment that Jesus came as the Light to the world to bring us all hope.  You can read the Christmas story from the book of Luke.