Rev Dr Jonathan Pritchard

Parish Priest, All Saints, Highfield, and St Barnabas, Thwaites Brow writes

Waiting. Waiting for a baby to be born. My wife is nine months pregnant. And the days are ticking by. Waiting, waiting. Our Vicarage was about to have an explosion of new life. A tiny baby to turn our world upside down. We’re about to go through what all parents share. Not just the daily ritual of wet nappies and broken sleep. But the hard inexpressible joy of birth, overwhelmed by the human truth of this little tiny child. Tired but proud parents holding a new life in our arms, uncertain about what the future holds, knowing that love is costly and necessary. We wait.

All Christians wait too. But for a new world born in us and through us. For God who comes to us, lets himself be cradled in our arms, embraces the everyday truth of our lives. Christians are waiting, patiently waiting and praying for our world. Waiting for a Saviour.

The season of Advent begins the Christian Year with a sense of journey’s end. The Bible tells us Jesus will come again and answer our world with God’s judgement. And there will be a new heaven and a new Earth, and God will wipe away every tear. Advent crackles with this hidden, over-looked message. It invites us to take a good hard look at our lives and where we are headed.

Christmas celebrations are part of this much bigger picture about God and us. So don’t just drop by at the manger, take a shy peek and go away. See where it leads. Find out what the baby grows up to become. See Jesus the man. Laughing with his friends down the pub. A teacher, healer, friend. Jesus who changes lives. The warm humanity of God with us. Jesus is born into a world in sore need of divine love and tenderness. And when you see him broken and nailed to a Cross see God’s love and God’s judgement there. Costly and necessary, it changes everything. Now there is nothing that can separate us from God, not even death. Like parents at their best, God accepts the worst in us and makes this acceptance the beginning of our redemption. That makes Christmas worth all our parties and more. We are waiting for a baby to be born in the Vicarage. The world is waiting for a baby to be born at Christmas. Will you let this baby Jesus grow up and be born in you too?

  • Since the article was penned a not so little baby boy weighing in at 9lb 3oz has been born