A CHRISTMAS MESSAGE

Searching for the missing peace....

“There’s a piece missing! Dad, there’s a piece missing!” came the mournful cry from my daughter as she came into the room clutching our Christmas nativity scene. We had just finished setting up the Christmas tree and the last thing we always do is to place our nativity scene on a small table beside the tree.

But when my daughter had gone to retrieve the nativity scene from the Christmas box where we keep all of our Christmas decorations, she suddenly found that a piece of the scene was missing. “What piece is missing?” I asked. “The baby Jesus! We can’t have Christmas without Jesus!” And as she said that it suddenly struck me – she was absolutely right! You can’t have Christmas without Jesus, and yet that is exactly what so many people try to do. They want the joy of Christmas without recognizing the One who came to bring joy and peace to all who would place their faith and trust in Him.

As we rummaged through our Christmas box searching for the missing piece, something else occurred to me. This is also what so many people spend their lives doing. They rummage through the box of life, desperately searching for the missing peace! They long for an inner sense of peace and contentment, but no matter what they pull out of the box of life, it never seems to really satisfy. “If only I could get a new play station; if only I could get a new ipod, a new job, a new car, a new house, a new..... whatever....., then I’d really be happy.

But no matter how many things we get, no matter how many new experiences we have, most of us are still left feeling restless and discontent. We just don’t have an inner sense of peace.

On that first Christmas night, the angles who announced the birth of Jesus to those Bethlehem shepherds called out, “Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace to men, on whom his favour rests”. Why peace? Because Jesus came to bring us peace – peace with God and then peace within ourselves. The Bible tells us that our selfishness and wrong-doing has set us up in opposition to God. But as Jesus died upon the cross, He took the punishment that all of our selfishness and wrong-doing deserved, so that all who would trust in Him might be truly be forgiven and find peace with God. And the amazing thing is that when we finally discover peace with God, we suddenly discover the secret to finding peace within ourselves as well.

Maybe this Christmas it is time for you to find the missing peace. Why not find it now by placing your faith and trust in the Christ of Christmas.

pfrancis@citytabernacle.com.au