Righteousness. It’s one of those heavy sounding words that you either love or hate.

The phrase ‘The righteous’ can have a negative quality: those who consider themselves better than others, usually morally but in other ways as well. They are a cut above us plebs and they let us know it any time we attempt to mingle with them.

It can have a positive quality when we link it to ourselves though. This usually comes when we believe we have done the right thing, made the right decision or been the bigger person in a given situation.

Although, interestingly in both of those examples, it’s what we or others believe about ourselves. That doesn’t seem quite…well… right though.

Because what’s to stop me thinking that I’m ‘all right’, when I’m not?

From the Biblical perspective, no one is ‘all right’, not one person at all. It doesn’t matter how much money they have, what car they drive, how many times they’ve been to Church or whether they keep their super with the fund that exploits people or the super fund that helps save endangered animals (and so on).

It’s because no one is ‘all right’ that Jesus came. That’s why it says in Hark the Herald Angels Sing:

Hail the Heaven-born Prince of Peace
Hail the Son of Righteousness
Light and life to all He brings
Risen with healing in His wings
Mild He lay His glory by
Born that man no more may die

Jesus is fathered by righteousness. He’s from the family of the righteous. He came at Christmas to invite us into that same family: to be righteous like him. Christmas gives us the chance to change; the chance to become righteous.

And that’s all right with me.

Yours in joining the family,

Alison