Friday 12 December 2008

Preparations for the season of 'good will'

Preparations for the Christmas season seem to get earlier every year! I wonder if, in the future, the traditional January sales will become the post-christmas sales and the annual summer holiday, the pre-christmas break! Why this increasing focus on christmas when the vast majority of people have not the faintest idea of what the season should really be about? The season of 'good will' has no meaning at all if it is divorced from the historical reality of the birth of Christ. 'Good will to all men' was proclaimed by the angels announcing the birth of the one who came to save men and women from their sins. 'Good will' in this context has little to do with the general sense of benevolence that is supposed to, though rarely does, characterise this season; it is, rather an announcement of God's goodness to men and women in the provision of a saviour from sin for all those who believe.
So many people make such diligent preparations for the season of 'good will' and no preparation whatever to receive the good will of God in Jesus Christ.