I LOVED the wonderful photos of the Christingle service from Crediton Parish Church in the Courier — what a wonderfully magical time Christmas is for children!

Maybe the Christmas story loses some of its charm if it is taken as an adult story, if it is taken too seriously or too literally? It becomes yet another tiresome story about human suffering, struggling, and searching.

The story begins in an occupied land, at the time of a census aimed at extracting yet more tax.

We find a young couple seeking temporary housing before fleeing from a child-murdering puppet king. This story features political oppression, homelessness, unemployment, and vulnerable asylum seekers.

We don’t want to hear any more about that kind of suffering right now — let’s keep Christmas for the children.

It’s a story of great struggle too: the old man Zechariah, who finally reaches his career pinnacle but fluffs all his lines; his wife, stigmatised by childlessness for decades; and then the younger parents — Mary and Joseph — she with a far-fetched story about her pregnancy, he broken-hearted by his childhood sweetheart’s apparent betrayal, both of them terrified of the rumour mill.

Here is professional failure, personal disappointment, hurt, fear, and shame. We’ve had enough of those things — maybe we should keep Christmas for the children?

And then it is also a story of searching. The best scientists of the day — we know them as the wise men — are on a hunt for truth, meaning, wisdom, and hope; Simeon and Anna wait all their lives for hope; and the shepherds run to find the baby.

Perhaps we come to the story as searchers too, with our own questions and ideas, wanting to believe life is something more than just keeping up appearances or making a living.

But who wants to face big questions at Christmas? Maybe it’s better to eat, drink, and watch telly — and leave Christmas for the children.

But what if Christmas is not only for the children? What if it is for people like us — people suffering and struggling and searching, just like us?

The outrageous claim of the Christian story is that Christmas is not only about suffering and struggling and searching, but that it is also about God — that in Jesus, God enters into our world.

When you add God to suffering, struggling, and searching, you open up the possibility of something new: hope.

Hope gives us the courage to face suffering, struggling, and searching as grown-ups. It is the hope that, as God enters those things, they can be changed in helpful ways.

Perhaps when we face these grown-up realities in our own lives, we will find God waiting there to help us with them?

This is the most audacious hope of the Christmas story: that God is Immanuel, which means “God with us”, wherever we are and whatever we face.

Maybe Christmas is not just for the children — maybe it’s for us too.

James Gregory

Senior Pastor

Crediton Congregational Church