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From Dave Tomlinson, writer and Vicar of St Luke’s Holloway in London:

Unsurprisingly, my favourite Christmas event was the madness which is the Nativity Play. This year, Mary and Joseph were played by Lottie and Jasper (aged 5). The best bit was when Joseph motioned to the innkeeper and said ‘She’s about to have a baby’, to which Mary feistily responded ‘I can speak for myself thank you Joseph….I’m about to have a baby.’ (I don’t think Lottie was prepared for the enthusiastic response of the audience!)

Sadly, ‘no room at the inn’, isn’t just a hackneyed line from a Nativity Play; it’s the hideous reality of growing numbers of homeless people in our towns and cities.

At one of our Christmas services I played the video of Ralph McTell singing his 50-year-old song ‘Streets of London’ with a choir comprised entirely of homeless people. I asked the children what they thought about the people in the choir. ‘You’d never think they were homeless’, one said, ‘they look like us.’

To me, Christmas isn’t just about a birth 2000 years ago, but about recognising Christ in people today – in homeless people and others who are lonely, sick, bereaved or troubled. Jesus said, ‘when you are kind to those in need, you are really being kind to me.’

Sometimes homeless people sleep in our church porch. Neighbours don’t always like it. Yet once we talk to homeless people we discover that they really are like the rest of us, but just happen to be victims of sad or adverse circumstances.

My wife politely asked one homeless man in the porch if he could let people past for the carol service. Talking with him, she discovered he’d recently been released from prison and had nowhere to go. She told him about our winter night-shelter project and gave him leaflets about places he could go for help.

Two months later, the man stood on our doorstep with a child in a pushchair. ‘I just want to thank you for your kindness’, he said. ‘It really helped. And now I am on my feet, back with my family, and feel there is hope for the future.’

A spot of goodwill won’t solve all the world’s problems….but it’s not a bad place to begin! And it may just make all the difference to someone.