The message of Jesus and his birth marked each Christmas is for meand each of us the beginning of a new world; the arrival, suffering, dying andrising of God himself. The central theses (there are many, but here are two ofthem) of Christmas is lived out in the insignificance of Christ’s beginnings;from the birth of Christ ‘til now no one has the right to ask us where we comefrom (we are Christ’s) and we are in no one’s debt, except Christ’s! Let me illustratewith a story I have often told but never written. It goes like this. It is atrue story.

 They knelt down on theshores of Lake Ontario and gave God thanks for their deliverance and promptlylooked for a church home. It was not to be. No Protestant church in Toronto ofthe 1820’s would allow them in unless they fulfilled two conditions; first,they needed to provide a letter of transfer from their former church andsecondly (wait for it) they needed to re-pay their former masters for stealingproperty from them because they had escaped without paying their masterscompensation. Knowing there was no welcome, the Afro-American Christians sentto Abyssinia Baptist Church in Harlem to send a missionary to begin FirstBaptist Church in Toronto.

The above story reminds me that in the coming of Jesus no one getsto ask me where I’m from (He welcomes me unconditionally) and I owe no otherperson simply the work and person of Jesus my Lord and the Christ.

May I welcome the Christ anew in this Christmas time and may Iwelcome others in His name.

A healing, while, powerful and thankful Christmas, New Year andEpiphany (may the Magi teach us as we be Magi) this day and evermore. Amen.

Warmly,

In Christ

Jeremy Bell

Christmas 2008