Never going to give you up (Advent Day 19)

Christmas is mere days away. The last minute rush is on. And maybe today finds you feeling disconnected from it all.
You may be all alone, feeling like no one cares, thinking you will skip Christmas this year.
Or perhaps you are busy loving life and doing what you want and feel you don’t need a Saviour for all is going very well for you. In your eyes, you have it all in together and everything is working out to your plans.
Maybe you know you are distant from God and you feel that because of what you have done there is no hope for you. You are beyond redemption you feel. There is no way He could forgive my past, you think.
Maybe you grew up believing but now have grown more distant. Sure you still go to church now and again, but a virgin birth? Seriously?
It could be that your journey has been long, so long. You have been waiting and waiting. And your hope has started to fade.
Possibly you feel you are an outcast, a reject, shunned by the cool crowd. Ignored, sidelined by everyone. And you think if people ignore and reject you God would too.
But the message of Christmas is that no matter where you are, God himself left heaven and came down to touch earth, moving into the neighbourhood to meet us where we are. Jesus is reaching out to you in the despair, in the loneliness, in the heartache of broken relationship and presents that will never be opened now, in the bar where you go hoping for answers in a bottle, in the pew where you sit out of obligation. Wherever you are Jesus, the serpent crusher is reaching out to you! We can have hope. We can have faith in the pain of the journey for God has a plan in place that has been there from before the start. He is not going to give up on us now!
“Since he did not spare even his own Son but gave him up for us all, won’t he also give us everything else?” Romans 8:32 – Heaven touched earth as God gave His Son for us. He is not going to give up or abandon us now. Jesus is still reaching out to you this Christmas – will you stretch out and grab hold of the hand that placed stars in the sky, the hand that grasped straw in a manger, the hand that was pierced for our transgressions? God will never give up on you – take hope and don’t give up on Him!