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The Carols Christmas Service - 10/12/23


Lost and Found

Have you ever lost something?

Where’s my keys? video clip. 

Lost Meaning of Christmas!

I’ve lost things loads of times! I wonder too if we have lost something of the meaning of Christmas.

I love Christmas I love it so much I live everyday as Christmas Day. It’s not about the presents or the size of the gifts, it’s about the joy that comes with it. 

People will talk about Christmas spirit - what we mean is being nice to each other, based on the biblical phrase: Luke 2:14: “Glory to God in the highest heaven, and on earth peace to those on whom his favour rests.”

Maybe there’s a bit of Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol in our meaning of Christmas spirit too:

Narrator: Every man among them hummed a Christmas tune, or had a Christmas thought, or spoke below his breath to his companion of some by-gone Christmas Day, with homeward hopes belonging to it. And every man on board… had a kinder word for one another on that day than on any day in the year…

To be honest, sometimes it’s exhausting being nice to people, even just one day of the year! 

Things Get Lost!

And you know, it doesn’t matter who you are, how much you have, sometimes life is full of the regret about what has been taken for granted and lost.

In 2023 a massive hunt was launched for a guitar. Not just ay guitar, a Hofner bass guitar made famous by Paul McCartney, when he was in the Beatles. 

Apparently, and the facts are not too clear, the guitar was lost sometime around 1969. Maybe left behind after a concert, or in a hotel room. No one knows, that’s kinda the point when something’s lost. No one is quite sure how it happened.

Now Sir Paul, has an estimated net worth of $1.2 billion in 2023. That’s a lot of money. He could get any guitar in the world. Even so, Sir Paul misses the old guitar. He has had copies and substitutions, none quite does it for him.

Something that was taken for granted was lost. 

  • Lost things impact us. 
  • Lost relationships impact us. 
  • Lost status impacts us. 
  • Lost jobs impacts us. 
  • Lost grades impacts us.

When something is lost, no matter what we try and fill the void with, it will always affect us. 

Oh, we learn to move on. We learn to cope. We learn to cover up the sadness. We fill our lives with what we can get instead. Sometimes, like Sir Paul, we try to go back (I’d love him to find the bass guitar by the way).

Lostness Affects Us

Lostness affects us because actually we are lost. You may say, “No I’m not, I know exactly where I am.”

Not lost in the geographic sense, but in the sense that we are actually made by Someone else for something else. We are far away from our Maker.

When we hear the refrain, “Peace on earth, good will to all people,” it’s not about being nice to everyone. It is about celebrating the fact that God has done something so that we can live lives that are ‘found’ again.

  • A relationship with God, once lost, now found, 
  • A purpose in life, once lost, now found, 
  • A happiness and joy, once lost, now found, 
  • A family , once lost, now found,
  •  A meaning to life, once lost, now found.

You see when we admit we are lost, and we allow God through Jesus in, we are found by Him.  And when you are found by Him, you find everything else that matters in life. Everything!

It’s a strange old world we live in. We throw away the things we should keep, disregard the things we need and push away the one gift at Christmas we should be clamouring to get: Jesus!

We Can be Found

Jesus told a story (parable) about a lost son. One day he returned, poor, broken, at his lowest, and the Father throws a party saying: Luke 15:32: But we had to celebrate and be glad, because this brother of yours was dead and is alive again; he was lost and is found.’”

You see, that’s the reason Jesus came and the reason for the season. 

Luke 19:10: [Jesus said]: “For the Son of Man (Jesus) came to seek and to save the lost.”

Why did Jesus come?

God gives you a Christmas gift, Himself in His Son: John 3:16-17: For God so loved the world that he gave his one and only Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life. 17 For God did not send his Son into the world to condemn the world, but to save the world through him.

God has a plan and a purpose for your life, a life that is full and overflows.

But sin, the things that make us lost to God, came in and broke off that plan.

So God did something. He sent Jesus, who we celebrate at Christmas, to live and to die for our sins so that we can be found and have a relationship with Him

All you have to do is say yes, invite Jesus into your heart this Christmas, and He will forgive you, give you a new start, a new life, a found life.

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