Where Did the Baby Come From? // One Year Ends, Another Begins
, Part 3

<p class="p1">The shepherds who were there when Jesus was born were looking up at the stars, just as Abraham had been all those centuries before, when God made him the most amazing promise. Yeah, they were looking up and also back to that amazing promise, that through Abraham God would bless all the nations.</p> <p>Christmas Night is, I think, the most amazing night. You know we sing that song, "O holy night, the stars, the stars are shining", and you think of the shepherds and the angels and Mary and Joseph and that baby, Jesus, God in the flesh. Part of me wishes I were there. I wish I was there and could see it and be part of it, and yet there’s another part of me that’s glad I know Jesus the way He always intended me to know Him – that is through the presence of God, the Holy Spirit in me.</p> <p>When we strip away all the rubbish of Christmas, and please; I don’t mean to denigrate the whole giving presents, families getting together, celebration, holiday – they are all good things. But there’s this dimension to Christmas which is a Santa Claus, which is trying to fool our kids into thinking that these presents were brought by a guy in a red suit and reindeer and down a chimney that we don’t have, and … you know … there’s that sort of big con thing, and all the big department stores, all the shops are on the bandwagon to make money and the whole success of Christmas is measured by the retail sales figures … Give me a break! That’s the part of Christmas that I think: Aren’t we missing the point here? When we strip away all of that rubbish, Christmas itself is the most wonderful of all celebrations.</p> <p>But it’s struck me how often we skip over the beginning of the New Testament, the very first chapter, the first verses in the first chapter. It begins like this:</p> <p style="padding-left: 40px;"><em>An account of the genealogy of Jesus the Messiah, the son of David and the son of Abraham. Abraham was the father of Isaac and Isaac was the father of Jacob and Jacob was the father of Judah and his brothers.</e