Dear Friends

Once again Christmas comes upon us and as we think about buying presents and food many begin to shudder at the cost involved. Many families spend hundreds if not thousands of pounds on giving expensive gifts and when January comes and the credit card bills start coming in, some are almost beside themselves with money worries. But there is a cost to Christmas which is often forgotten. It cost Mary and Joseph the comforts of home life during a long period as refugees in Egypt to protect the little Babe. It cost mothers in and around Bethlehem the massacre of their babies by cruel Herod who wanted to kill Jesus. It cost the wise men a long journey and expensive gifts, it cost the early apostles and the early church persecution and sometimes death. It cost missionaries untold suffering and privation to spread the good news. It cost Christian martyrs in all ages their lives for Christ sake. Above all it cost God the Father His own Son, giving up his own Son to become a Sacrifice for sin, tortured to death on the Cross for our benefit and for our own sakes.

The cost to make Christmas happen was incalculable and yet it is a message which many take for granted and fail to respond to. They ignore the challenge of the Christmas message which is that God, at great Personal Cost, is calling out to a lost world to change its ways before it is too late. It was an act of the most profound significance and yet many people respond to it with the greatest indifference and lack of concern. They celebrate the material side of Christmas but ignore the profound message that lies behind it all, namely that God is a God of Judgement as well as a God of love and that our sins had to be punished in some manner, in order for us to be forgiven. If there had been no Christmas, there would have been no Cross, and the Penalty our sins deserved would not have been paid. There ould have been no forgiveness on offer! That's how thankful we ought to be!

As people grow and mature in understanding regarding the real message of Christmas it leads them to the point where their conscience tells them that such a Sacrifice, such a Gift beyond words, needs and deserves the love, loyalty and devotion of our hearts by way of a response. Many people know this deep down, by they try and put off making decisions to turn to Christ. They keep on putting it off and putting it off. But "now is the Day of Salvation, now is the accepted time", such a decision cannot be put off forever.

Former President Ronald Regan said he learnt to make decisions early on in life. An aunt had taken him to a cobbler to have a pair of shoes made for him. The shoemaker asked young Ronald Regan, "Di you want a square toe, or a round toe?" Regan was undecided so the cobbler said "come back in a day or so and tell me what you want". A few days later, the shoemaker saw Regan on the street and asked what he had decided. "I still haven't made up my mind", the boy answered. When Reagan received the shoes, he was shocked - one shoe had a square toe and the other a round toe. "Looking at those shoes every day taught me a lesson I never forgot", said Reagan years later. "If you don't make your own decisions, someone else will make them for you."

God is calling us to respond to this most awesome Sacrifice and Gift. Now is the time to say "yes Lord I am going to properly follow you, yes Lord I turn away from doing all that I know is wrong". "Now is the time" because as St Paul warned in Hebrews Chapter 2, "Since veery act of disobedience will be punished, how will we escape judgement if we neglect so great an offer of Salvation".

This Christmas let us take the message of Jesus into the depths of our hearts and respond with a wholehearted commitment to follow Him all the rest of our lives.

Happy Christmas and Peaceful New Year.

Your pastor and friend