Real-time Christmas

I’m sitting in Costa coffee. It’s a cold, dark winters evening. The pavements on the street outside are wet. So wet that they look glass-like, a kind of mirror sheen slickly coats the whole surface of the street outside. The shining street surface catches beams of light that reflect in stunning lines all over it, creating a symphonic mix of colours. Blues, reds, greens. They are reflected from the hundreds of Christmas lights that adorn the shops and café's.

It feels like Christmas.

Christmas changes the city.

Of course, I am talking about a cosmetic change.

A change to the whole look of the city.

The city is transformed.

It reminds me of a kind of ashes to beauty transformation.

As I look into the colours reflected on the pavement, I ruminate on the fact that Christmas; this cosmetic transformation, brings a kind of warmth inside that is real and comforting.

Christmas really does change the city.

After my Costa light with hazelnut essence, I walk down to a not so Christmassy place.

Down in a doorway on the edge of the City centre I see Richard sleeping. His matted hair sticking out of the top of his dirty sleeping bag. A wine bottle stands empty beside him. The flask of soup he received today lies on its side minus its lid, a trickle of untouched soup spills out on to the wet concrete.

I’m better leaving him asleep.

I want to take him home or get him a bed in a night hostel, but he never takes us up on our offers.

I think about Christmas changing the city.

It doesn’t seem quite so transforming here away from the bright lights and the decorations.

A kind of thick frustration rises up into my heart and starts to jostle for a place with the compassion I’m also feeling.

The commercialism of Christmas, the cosmetic Christmas, sucks so many into its attractive glow.
It has the power to make us feel different.

Looking at Richard sleeping in this doorway?

Somehow I don’t think he is catching the warmth really.

Then the truth of Christmas steals in on my thinking.

Jesus was born so that real-time transformation of this world is totally possible.

So many, including myself at times, buy into the pseudo-warmth of a cosmetic Christmas.
Pseudo-warmth can transform a city, cosmetically at least.

But the real truth of Christmas, the birth of Jesus Christ, can transform a life, a city, a nation, the world!

The truth of Christmas lasts every day for all of time.

Cosmetic Christmas gets packed away in January and comes out again next year.

For Richard in his doorway, cosmetic Christmas means absolutely nothing.

But the real-time truth of Christmas means he has a hope.

He isn’t a hopeless case.

None of us are.

If we could buy into the real-time truth of Christmas as easily as we buy into the cosmetic Christmas our lives would change forever.

That is the true transformation that Jesus Christ of Nazareth makes totally possible.
A real-time hope, a real-time truth and a real-time relationship.

I pray this Christmas will be a watershed for you, a new start, a real hope and a reminder why we are here on this planet at all.

And I want to say here thank you to all those who have taken the time to read my blog this year. Thousands and thousands of hits from over 40 countries! Especially for my last post, the Salvation Army and alcohol, which had over 500 hits in three hours!It is just breath-taking! It is such a blessing to me personally especially all the emails full of encouragement about my writing. It is spurring me on to write much more in the future. Next year I am going to open my blog up for more comments so watch out for that. I pray that God has touched you in some way through my blog, and I pray for you that 2012 will bring massive blessing on your life.

Merry Christmas.
Gaz