Are you an ‘early bird’ when it comes to preparing for Christmas – or do you leave it until the last minute? As I write this in mid-November, I have to confess that I have not even bought the ingredients I need to make my Christmas cake and puddings.

I may not be as forward with my planning as I would wish, but I am so glad that God had planned so long in advance for the first Christmas. From the moment sin entered the world, God was planning a way to bring us back into relationship with Himself. He prepared a nation, a tribe within that nation, and a family within the tribe, into which His Son, Jesus, would be born.

He prepared those who would be involved in that momentous event by sending His Holy Spirit on them: Zechariah, Elizabeth, John the Baptist, Mary, Joseph and Simeon. Circumstances came together to ensure that Jesus was born in the right place, at the right time, to the right community. As Paul puts it in his letter to the Galatians, ‘When the time had fully come, God sent His Son, born of a woman, born under the law, to redeem those under the law, that we might receive the full rights of sons’.

I am sure that my preparations will get made, but what is more important is that we all prepare our hearts and minds to receive afresh God’s gift to us. After all, He prepared for the first Christmas meticulously and sacrificially. He could not have given more.

May God give us a Christmas filled with the deep joy and peace that only God’s Holy Spirit can bring, as we celebrate God’s gift to us.