At our staff devotion last week, I took my colleagues through a WIFLE (What I Feel Like Expressing) session. The first to speak expressed Fear for 2019.

FEAR. It’s December. The month that so poignantly reminds us of what we set out to do but failed to achieve. And with it comes the Yuletide season. The old familiar carols are starting to repeat the all too-common words: Peace on earth, Good will to men. But just like it was that first Christmas 2000 years ago, it’s anything but peace in 2018. Our world is unhinged at the base: War. Strife. Despotic governments. Economic turmoil. Family conflict. Financial duress. Then, like now, people had a deep fear of what was to come.

FEAR NOT. That phrase is repeated 71 times in my King James version Bible; 3 times in the Christmas story. Very telling! We have an unhealthy dose of fear. Fear floats freely in the wind, and in our direction. It is the jackhammer in the hands of evil.

BUT GOD. He speaks to the timid 14 year old Mary: Fear not. To society’s outcasts – the lowly shepherds who live on the fringes of society: Fear Not. To the poverty-stricken carpenter Joseph, who was about to make the biggest mistake of his life (he was secretly planning to divorce Mary, having found out she was spoilt goods): Fear Not.

DO NOT FEAR. That is the short message of Christmas. I have a plan and a purpose, if you can learn to trust me, says God. Yes. The message of Christmas is one for every day; it removes the need to worry. To be fearful. To dread the future. #Sunday