Riccarton Parish Church

21 OLD STREET KILMARNOCK, KA1 4DX

Charity Number SC006040

Dear Friends,

I came across the following account of Christmas in Romania in 1989:

Laszlo Tokes, the Romanian pastor whose mistreatment outraged the country and prompted rebellion against the Communist ruler Ceausescu, tells of trying to prepare a Christmas sermon for the tiny mountain church to which he had been exiled. The state police were rounding up dissidents, and violence was breaking out across the country. Afraid for his life, Tokes bolted his doors, sat down, and read again the stories in Luke and Matthew. Unlike most pastors who would preach that Christmas, he chose as his text the verses describing Herod's massacre of the innocents. It was the single passage that spoke most directly to his parishioners. Oppression, fear, and violence, the daily plight of the underdog, they well understood.

The next day, Christmas, news broke that Ceausescu had been arrested. Church bells rang, and joy broke out all over Romania. Another King Herod had fallen. Tokes recalls, "All the events of the Christmas story now had a new, brilliant dimension for us, a dimension of history rooted in the reality of our lives … For those of us who lived through them, the days of Christmas 1989 represented a rich, resonant embroidery of the Christmas story, a time when the providence of God and foolishness of human wickedness seemed as easy to comprehend as the sun and the moon over the timeless Transylvanian hills." And for the first time in four decades, Romania celebrated Christmas as a public holiday.

For many people throughout the world the words “Merry Christmas” can seem hollow and empty. For various reasons life can be a struggle. I’m sure that we’ve all felt that we have been unfairly treated at some time or another, but some people have more reason to feel that way than others.

Whatever our situation we can find hope in the Christmas story. We see there the account of how God became directly involved with his creation by taking on our humanity. Eight hundred years before Jesus was born, the prophet Isaiah said of his coming:

3 He was despised and rejected by men,
   a man of sorrows, and familiar with suffering.
Like one from whom men hide their faces
   he was despised, and we esteemed him not.

 4 Surely he took up our infirmities
   and carried our sorrows,
yet we considered him stricken by God,
   smitten by him, and afflicted.
5 But he was pierced for our transgressions,
   he was crushed for our iniquities;
the punishment that brought us peace was on him,
   and by his wounds we are healed.
6 We all, like sheep, have gone astray,
   each of us has turned to our own way;
and the LORD has laid on him
   the iniquity of us all.

Whatever we may go through, we can be certain that God is involved. He did not remain remote and distant, but chose to get his hands dirty. Indeed, one of the names given to Jesus is Immanuel, which means “God with us”

I wish you all a Merry Christmas, and my prayer is that this Christmas we would each experience “God with us.”

Colin A Strong.