A visitor

Today as I write, I am imagining all of you opening this email and praying that God’s blessing will descend on you, that God will visit you this Christmas.

All around the UK, people are preparing to be visited or to visit with varying degrees of excitement or unfestive stress.

Think for a moment of the house of your life and imagine the front door. Maybe it has a beautiful Christmas wreath or maybe you have been far too busy for that. But, look at who is standing, knocking at the door. Look at who has come to visit you for Christmas.

Will you open the door? The innkeeper’s door was shut to this visitor 2000 years ago –”No room” he said.

What will I do? My house is full today - Sellotape and wrapping and mess. Is it ready for this divine visit?

That’s part of the stress of Christmas for me. I want to present a perfect home for my visitors, but honestly with a Springador mud-magnet, it isn’t going to happen. And I want to present a perfect home for God but I don’t just have an imperfect home, I have an imperfect heart.

Praise God - here is the heart of Christmas! Our visitor is our Saviour!

Our visitor visits us in our mess, born into a splintered world, to have those splinters driven into his hands to make us whole.

“A Saviour has been born to you!” (Luke 2:11).

I turned to the concordance at the back of my battered old Bible this morning looking at the verses with the words Saviour and Salvation in them. I made a start but ran out of time - there are so many! Do you know that promises of salvation are scattered across Scripture like stars filling the sky? God planned this visit long ago.

Here is joy to lift the heaviest heart. When I spoke in prison last week, the weight of sadness was palpable at the start of the service. Of course, such aching grief and shame is not only in prisons, everywhere I go, there are broken hearts and damaged lives - which is why the heart of our story is so wonderful – we have a Saviour who visits us in our grief and mess to save us, who hears the needy and does not despise his captive people (Ps 69:33).

I wonder if like me, you too need this reminder of great joy that blazes in the darkness - a Saviour has been born to you and he wants to visit you to be your Saviour today.

I want to finish by saying a huge thank you to all of you who have supported and prayed for me through this year which has been an extraordinary blend of joy and sorrow, (a little microcosm of life!) - breast cancer, a new book, another grandchild and many lives touched by our Saviour who comes to visit us.

Happy Christmas!

With thanks to Phil Hearing on Unsplash for the picture