Uniting Church Western Australia Moderator Rev Steve Francis shares his 2019 Christmas greetings reflecting on why small does not mean insignificant.
The story of Christmas is a love story of smallness. The birth of Jesus Christ, one of the most miraculous events in history, took place in a small stable. But if you look back at the nativity story- you see it’s huge significance. God gave us Jesus Christ.
Watch Steve’s greetings below on Vimeo.
Moderator’s 2019 Christmas Greeting
My name is Steve Francis. I am the Moderator of the Uniting Church in WA. It’s a great privilege for me to bring you a Christmas greeting.
Feels like in our society sometimes, we can feel pretty small and insignificant.
We live in a vast universe of huge proportion with galaxies and stars. And we can feel insignificant and small.
But I think when we look at the Christmas story, we can see that smallness can be not insignificant but very significant.
The story of the nativity looks like at first glance a story of smallness.
Joseph was a small time carpenter, he fell in love with Mary, she discovered she had a small bump.
And they needed to jump on a little small donkey and go to a small town and give birth to their small child, in a small shed. Everything about that story seems on the surface, insignificant.
But when you stand and look back at this great story, you see huge significance. God has come in human form in Jesus Christ.
The bigness of God has become small- in the form of a child.
God has got skin.
And so out of this sense of wonder and awe at what God has done for the world, in Jesus Christ, we are not only we are not only awestruck by this story but also deeply grateful for the love and generosity of God in coming to this planet.
And that means during Christmas we want to share that love and generosity to others, not just our family and friends. We want to think about how we can give to people who are struggling with life- the battlers, those who are poor, those who are homeless, those who are in prison, those who are in hospital.
We need to think of how we can be generous to faith based organisations that are putting so much time and energy into caring for the less fortunate.
We need to be people of big hearts.
People who forgive those who we’ve wronged during the year.
People who try to be reconciled with others as God has done in Jesus Christ.
We need to find space in our hearts for worship and praise and truly thank God for the awe and wonder for the gift of his son.
I hope you and your family and your church and your congregation have an awesome Christmas and you know the blessing of God at this special time of year.
God bless you all.
Rev Steve Francis
Moderator