It's also a story of pain and loss, and of humanity's wilfulness rejection of God's purposes and of his love. The world is as each human heart is: broken.

Christianity is a story about God’s plan to fix the brokenness caused by our rejection of him. We might not see the link, but rejecting God is the root problem for damaged relationships, frail bodies and even a broken world. That’s why it’s a story about love. Because God loves his world and his people so much that he isn’t prepared to let it be destroyed by evil. That’s where Jesus comes in.

Christians have always located the most important moment in the history of the world in a Jewish carpenter and travelling teacher who lived in Palestine 2000 years ago. His name is Jesus, and he was called the Messiah, meaning ‘God’s rescuer and king’. Jesus has had a bigger impact on the world than any other person. More songs have been sung to him, more books have been written about him, more rulers have honoured him than any one else. And there’s a compelling reason for this: Jesus was crucified on a Roman cross and raised to life on the third day so that sin would be dealt with, evil defeated and so that humanity could once again be a part of God’s plan to make his world everything that it was supposed to be. This news – which Christians call the gospel – changes people when they find forgiveness in Jesus, hope for the future of God’s world and power that the risen Jesus himself gives through his Holy Spirit to live lives that honour God and sacrificially serve the world in love.