As the New Year approaches what is it that we as Christians should be holding on to? 

There are three characteristics that are highlighted in the New Testament as they occur together time and time again. What would you put in your top three?

The Apostle Paul says “and now faith, hope, and love remain, these three; but the greatest of these is love. 1 Cor 13:13.

Faith looks back to the past looking to what Jesus has done. Love has eyes on the present, our response everyday for what Jesus has done. Hope looks forward.

While love may be the greatest, I wonder if it is hope that we are most in need of being reminded of. It is easy to worn down by the world, discouraged in our faith. We may be worried about uncertainty in our lives. 

Hope is the answer. But not the way our world uses it. Hope is often used today to mean something along the lines of wishful thinking, the kind of characteristic you would find among optimistic people.

But hope is a characteristic for all Christians. Our hope is not in some vague picture of the future, but in the solid truth of the resurrection. Jesus’ resurrection is the first fruits of that day when he will return and raise us upto the new creation – our glorious inheritance. 

So Paul prays: “that you may know what is the hope to which he has called you, what are the riches of his glorious inheritance“  Eph 1:18.

Why is it our hope grows dim?

Perhaps we are captivated simply by the present. Our love is misdirected to the things of this world instead of being captivated by the one to come. 

Perhaps we have stopped looking to the past, where what Jesus has done assures our future. 

Our world wants us to doubt and worry, but hope is the antidote. Don’t let it grow dim, for in Jesus the resurrection has already begun, and so your hope is secure.

–  SIMON CHAPLIN

Summer is a wonderful thing. Golden days and warm evenings. 

But our summers also reckon with those two great forces of nature – fire and water. 

Both are able to turn against us in a moment – and we need saving. 

Sometimes, as we have seen tragically in fires in California and in Australia, we can miss the signs and don’t see the need of a saviour till it’s too late.

How welcome are the faces of the surf lifesavers or the bushfire fighters who spend their summers risking their own lives to save us when we are in trouble. 

At Christmas, we celebrate the arrival of a saviour for all time. Luke, the historian, records this in the Bible – ‘Today in the town of David a Saviour has been born to you; he is Christ the Lord.’  

When God, who created us – says we need a saviour and sends one – we should listen.

Make this Christmas a time to reach out to Jesus – the saviour we all need.

May you all have not just a stocking filled Christmas, but a Christ-filled Christmas.

–  DR GLENN N DAVIES 
   ARCHBISHOP OF SYDNEY

Angels, stables, donkeys, Mary and Joseph, the star, the shepherds, the wisemen, and of course the baby in a manger.  

People are familiar with this Christmas card scene, but we long for people to look deeper and see not just a baby in a manger but the Immanuel – God with us.  

There is much to surprise people when do – the absence from the accounts of a donkey for a start. The wisemen, who never made it to the birth, but arrived sometime before Jesus was 2. And there’s no mention of how many wisemen there were, whose actual name were the magi, and who may not have been men or wise at all! 

The stable may have been a cave, or the lower story of a guest room – however the manger was there and presumably the animals were too, perhaps even a donkey. But while people in their familiarity may miss these details, it is true that at least they have a picture of Jesus’ birth that night and a chance to find that deeper meaning.

What is more concerning is a generation for which each of these elements is gone altogether.

Jesus is replaced by Santa, the angels by elves, the animals by reindeer, the wisemen and the gifts by a Kmart catalogue. It’s not just that these things have become more important, but that there is no knowledge at all of the nativity events, and no real interest to discover them. 

There are kids today who simply don’t know about the shepherds who watched their flocks, or the star that appeared in the sky, or about the humble birth of our Lord and Saviour. 

Without the nativity we lose more than just Christmas, we lose God with us.

The nativity is not just fun and cute – it’s true and it’s crucial for us and our society that this account is remembered as the heart of Christmas. 

–  SIMON CHAPLIN