Wisdom is a precious thing because it is rare. Have you noticed that during the high celebration seasons of the year it becomes even more rare? It all depends on how you celebrate events like birthdays, wedding anniversaries, retirements, sporting occasions or the great annual religious festivals.

Christmas is perhaps the most famous such religious festival. How strange it is that so many folk mark it in a way that is totally empty of Christ, the one whose birth is being remembered. Wise, truly joyful celebration does not go hand in hand with shallowness or with rowdy inebriation.

Wise men and women prepare with carefulness for Christmas. The Advent (“The Coming”) season, covering the four weeks leading up to Christmas, provides this opportunity. Week by week, in our reading of Scripture or in our worship, we can go gradually deeper and deeper into the wonder of God’s plan to give us a Saviour, so that when Christmas Day arrives we again have a firm grasp of the miraculous depth of it all. A Saviour for my soul! A Saviour for my sinful self! A Saviour to befriend and guide me all my life long! Now that is cause for celebration!

I love to read in the Scriptures about the Wise Men (sometimes called the Magi) who travelled a long and hard road to Bethlehem to find our Saviour Jesus in the moments after his birth. In the second chapter of Matthew’s Gospel we have a clear account of their involvement. We see how their wisdom was used by God.

They searched for Jesus in order to worship him. That was wise. They refused to give up despite the hardness of the journey. That was wise. They sensed instinctively that this unique birth was a cause for joyfulness. That was wise. They offered the Saviour Jesus their most precious things. That was wise. They refused to be deceived by the evil intentions of King Herod. That was wise. Instead they responded obediently to divine guidance. That was wise.

Can each of us this Christmas be wise in similar ways? How wonderful that we can be wise men or wise women or wise young people in offering to the Saviour our most precious gifts of love and service all our days, and that by the indwelling grace of his Holy Spirit we can in glad obedience answer his call to be his loyal disciples.

A happy and blessed Christmas and new year to you all.

General Shaw Clifton is the world leader of The Salvation Army