It's beginning to feel a lot like Christmas. Carol services are in full-flow and twinkling lights adorn ancient buildings and modern shopping centres alike.

Some of us may be very organised, and some of us may be less-so; some of us may be feeling full of festive cheer, and some of us may be finding it harder this year, but most of us will be thinking about how we navigate one or more festive gatherings - replete with party hats, mice pies, carol singing and conversation.

Gathering is a crucial part of the festive ritual; it is what we 'do' as a species when there is a major event, and we are really quite good at it. We bring out the special food, we sing the special music, we dance, we laugh, we cry, we talk, we tell stories and we experience together. Because gathering is about togetherness; about sharing an experience which is richer and deeper and more meaningful when each of us share in it.

One of the things I have most valued about Christian community throughout the ups and down of my own journey, has been our continued commitment to gathering; every Sunday, rain or shine, whether we 'feel like it' or not, whether we're bouncy or blue or in-between. It is a community which remind us it is enriched by your presence and your part in the story, as much as everyone else there.

At Christmas, we gather to remember how Jesus' birth wove God's story and our story together in a new way; in a way that changed the world. In a way that seemed so unassuming, so ordinary, so small, so full of all the joyful and challenging and fruitful realities of life. So this Christmas, come all ye faithful and gather around the crib where our stories begin, and end, and continue for eternity, and in which (if we allow ourselves to get close-enough to peer in) we find the reality of life in all its fullness.