Christmas/Advent , God's Love, The Mortar That Holds Us All Together.

I well we Rochelle an I had a chat about God’s love as this is the Love week of Advent. We light the candle of love, that indicates God’ love.

As you will be aware as this year, we have journeyed through Old Testament texts, God’s love is woven through those passages. We see Jesus represented throughout the Old Testament as well as the new, In the beginning God created, he spoke all things into being, in the beginning was The Word (John 1:1), all was spoken into being, Isaiah tells us 700 years before Jesus was born, ““For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulder: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” (Isaiah 9:6) we read of God appearing as a man to Abraham, one like a son of man in the fire with Sadrach, Meshach and Abedngo. If we read Psalm 22, we read a depiction of Jesus crucifixion and Jesus points to it on the Cross when he says, “My God, my God why have you abandoned me.” That’s just a few examples. Jesus is like the icing you made your gingerbread houses from, metaphorically speaking bonding everything together.

The birth of Jesus, his life and his death, show us the love of God so much so that he came as a man and was born into an ordinary family, lived as one of us and died for our sins. Died so that we can be close to God, eternally close to God. He is woven throughout scripture, throughout Biblical history and through our lives and current history. Bonding everything together.

Well today just because I can I want to share with you a couple of pictures, one that I took and one that is much better than the one that I took of the same thing.

The first is this whooping great big church the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona, Spain and the other is a small part of the building, I took the second picture when we had five days in Barcelona, it’s a stone carving . Antonio Gaudi was the architect behind this grand building. Work started on the basilica 1882 and it is planned to be finished in 2032. Gaudi is famous for his art and architecture but also for say “My client is in no hurry.” As he believed that God had all the time in the world.

So, the second picture: a simple nativity scene Jesus at the centre, Joseph and Mary. I like how the donkey is entering the scene, sort of photo bombing.

At this time of the year Jesus is at the centre. But without the love of his parents for one another Mary would have been a single parent, without Mary’s love for God and willingness to put her reputation and at that time life on the line so that Jesus could be born our history would not be what it is. Jesus is the central character in history and in our lives showing God’s love, so that we can be in relationship with God and no longer under his wrath and condemnation for our own wrong doing.

Christmas is a message of love, of family and Jesus is the mortar of our lives that holds it all together. For if he wasn’t, like the basilica without mortar our lives, families, our wider community would not hold together. We would not know the freedom that God’s love brings, we would not know the stability of family, that’s our own and the wider Church family if not for God’s love. Even for those who don’t believe in God, he pours out his love, making the sun to shine on them, there is provision available for all. God’s love as seen in Jesus is both the foundation and the mortar of all lives, binding, us together as he is the corner stone of our existence. Act 4:12 And there is salvation in no one else, for there is no other name under heaven given among men by which we must be saved.”