FAITH FILES Christmas continues

Alasdair Kay

SO all the decorations are down, the tree has gone to recycling or back in the loft and Creme Eggs are back in the supermarket.

That’s Christmas over. Well no, actually, it isn’t. Oh, the commercial Christmas is. The one that will sell us stuff. Now we’re all on a diet and waiting for chocolate at Easter.

Well, all except the Church, who still have four more weeks of Christmas to come.

In the Western Church this week we are between two festivals – Epiphany, the visit of the Magi to the Christ child, and the baptism of Christ. Rather conveniently we

Priest in charge at St Francis, Mackworth

pass over the almost silent 28 years between Epiphany and Baptism, the beginning of His ministry as Israel’s Messiah.

Yesterday I found myself tweeting “In the week between Epiphany and the baptism of Christ we too quickly forget that God was happy to go incognito for nearly 30 years, some of that as a refugee, all of it under a cloud of societal shame. So if your labour is hidden, keep going. He is with you.”

The silent 30 years were spent as a refugee, an apprentice carpenter and hidden in a non-place named Nazareth. God in Christ went incognito for nearly 30 years.

Every single day God is often working incognito. In homeless night shelters, in food banks, among refugees, In schools, in fact everywhere. God the ground of all being keeps, sustains, upholds everything.

The trouble is too often we stop looking for the fingerprints of God in our everyday lives. But, let me reassure you, if like the Magi you look you will find him.

As the church poster says: “Wise men still seek him.” So start looking, for His promise is faithful – “ask and you will receive, seek and you will find, knock and the door will be opened to you.

Happy Christmas everyone...