Christmas is a funny time. In some ways it can be ‘the most wonderful time of the year’ – food, family, friends, festive fashion and a chance to celebrate the wonder of the incarnation. In other ways, it can be a very difficult time – a time of loneliness, grief over the loss of loved ones, and relational tensions. Anyone can experience these difficulties, and that includes those of us who may sometimes find our experience of sexuality tricky to handle or may find singleness can be a difficult thing.

While Christmas can be an emotionally unsettling time, the true meaning of Christmas equips us to navigate that well.

But while the celebration of Christmas can be an emotionally unsettling time, the true meaning of Christmas equips us to navigate that well. At the heart of the Christmas story is a truth we can easily overlook but which has the power to help us when things are feeling tough: the truth that God gets us. He gets what it’s like to be a human. He knows the strain of loneliness and loss. And he knows this not just from the outside as the God who knows all things, but from the inside, as the God who became man.

The New Testament book of Hebrews presents this wonderfully. The book opens with the truth that Jesus is God: ‘He is the radiance of the glory of God and the exact imprint of his nature, and he upholds the universe by the word of his power’ (Hebrews 1:3). The whole of Hebrews 1 is affirming this truth – Jesus is far superior to all others, even to angels, because he is God. ‘God of God, Light of light … Very God’.

Hebrews 2 then introduces the other side of the coin. The one who is fully God has also become fully human. He and we have one source (Hebrews 2:11) and as we are flesh and blood, so ‘he himself likewise partook of the same things’ (Hebrews 2:14). God takes on humanity and is born of a virgin. ‘Veiled in flesh the Godhead see, Hail the incarnate Deity! Pleased as man with man to dwell, Jesus our Immanuel.’

There are lots of important outworkings and implications of this truth, several of which are drawn out in Hebrews 2. One of those is that God gets us.

‘Therefore he had to be made like his brothers in every respect, so that he might become a merciful and faithful high priest in the service of God, to make propitiation for the sins of the people. For because he himself has suffered when tempted, he is able to help those who are being tempted’ (Hebrews 2:17-18).

Jesus, as God and human, is able to be a high priest, interceding between us and God, making atonement (paying the price) for our sins. The one who is God and human reconciles God and humans through his atoning self-sacrifice.

And Jesus, as God and human, is able to understand, from the inside, what it’s like to be a human. He too has suffered. He too has been tempted. He too has been lonely. He too has known loss. He too has experienced relational tensions. And so, he is able ‘to sympathise with our weaknesses’ (Hebrews 4:15).

However we’re feeling about Christmas – whether excitement, dread or a mixture of the two – there is one we can turn to, one who is always with us, one who gets us. That is a truth that can comfort and strengthen. It’s a truth that reminds us there is one we can turn to when we may feel we have nowhere to turn.

At Christmas, we celebrate the fact that God became man. He lived on earth as a human. He experienced what we experienced, and that’s good news for us all, because that means he gets us.