Where's Your Focus? by Steph Beth Nickel

Despite the fact that the Christmas season revolves around the Saviour’s birth, even we who are Christian can become overwhelmed and distracted.

Let’s seek to focus on what’s truly important this month and as we head into 2018.

While we do our Christmas shopping …

Maybe you love to hunt for the perfect gift for each person on your Christmas list—whether online or in the stores. Or maybe you find it all exhausting, having no idea what people want or need. Maybe you’re stressed because of time and financial constraints.  

While we’re considering gift giving, let’s take time to step back and consider the Greatest Gift of All Time, our Lord and Saviour, the reason for this and every season.

The Christmas Star Still Shines Bright -HIRD

By Rev. Ed Hird

Every Christmas the Star gets our attention year in and year out.  What is it about the Bethlehem Star that never fails to shine?  What is it about the Bethlehem story that captures the imagination of billions of people throughout Canada and the entire globe? 

Two thousand years after the birth of Jesus, we are still bearing gifts, following that star.  If it was not for the wise men, none of us would be doing our Christmas shopping.  It is amazing how much energy we can put into Christmas, buying gifts, cooking turkeys, throwing parties.  Sometimes we can in our busyness forget that we are called to follow that star. As that Christmas Carol put it, “O star of wonder, star of night, Star with royal beauty bright, Westward leading, still proceeding, Guide us to thy perfect light.”

There is something very moving about perfect light, royal beauty bright light in the midst of a people living in great darkness.  December can be a time of great hopes and great stress.  No wonder that it is the high holiday of many alcoholics.  December is that time when fragmented families try once again to reconnect, however painfully.  Why do so many families watch the classic movie It’s a Wonderful Life every Christmas?  Perhaps it is because this movie captures the darkness and struggle that so many families experience at Christmas, and yet how the Christmas Star can still break in with unimaginable light and hope. 

Each of us, as the Carol puts it, may choose to look up and see a star, that to the earth it gives great light.  Each of us can choose to see the Christmas Star, Whose glory shines so far day and night.  Each of us can find great delight in the beauty of the Christmas Star that led the wise men to Jesus’ manger.  How many of us are willing to follow that star wheresover it goes?

Wise men and women even in 2016 still seek him.  As the Christmas Carol put it, “Sages, leave your contemplations, Brighter visions beam afar; Seek the great Desire of nations, Ye have seen his natal star: Come and worship, come and worship, Worship Christ, the newborn King.”  The Christmas Star causes us to celebrate a very unique birth, a baby boy who has become the Great Desire of Billions among the nations of the earth.  The Christmas Star leads us to come and worship, to come and adore him among the cattle and the sheep in a lowly manger. 

This Christmas on Sunday Dec 18^th at 10am, there will be a presentation of the Christmas Cantata Behold The Star.  May we all have eyes to see the Bethlehem Star and let this star touch your life this Christmas.

Rev. Dr. Ed Hird, Rector

St. Simon’s Church North Vancouver

Anglican Mission in Canada

-an article for the December 2016 Deep Cove Crier

-author of Restoring Health: body, mind and spirit