Looking at life through the prism of Christ offers significant critique of our world and very helpful answers. But what if the people you are addressing are looking through a different prism or don't understand mine.

The times in which we live make it hard to keep up with where people are at and it's easy to be out of touch.

Don't misunderstand me. I don't think for a second that Christianity is out of date, irrelevant or lacking answers. Nor do I think I am unaware of the issues we face as a diverse population.

Suffice to say, in the midst of a changing a world it is easy to lose touch with those you are trying to communicate with.

I became aware of just how foreign Jesus Christ is to many Australians when I met a man for whom Jesus Christ was only a profanity.

To him, you could add the person who rejects Jesus Christ but admits that they know so little about Jesus Christ that they are not sure why they reject Him.

Again I could add the person who rather likes their Christian friends but knows very little about the Christ of those friends. Sadly there are others whose bad experience of Christians has left them never looking into the person of Jesus Christ.

So I thought I would try and offer people a safe and anonymous encounter with Jesus through a series of articles. It will be a summary looks into the Jesus Christ who changed the world by changing the lives of people just like you and me.

All this is by way of introduction. So my initial look at Jesus Christ now needs to be very brief. December 25 our nation will celebrate the birth of this Jesus Christ.

He has genealogy. He is human, one of us. He was not of noble birth and was born to a woman in a stable according to promise. It's the promise I want to briefly draw to your attention.

The Bible Christians read, comprises 66 books, written by 40 different authors, over some 1500 years. Importantly the Bible maintains a cohesive story throughout based on promise. "Big deal!" you might say. Actually it is.

If it were not for the promises it would just be another history book. But the Old Testament part of the Bible develops the historical story of promise that is fulfilled in the birth of the Christ child.

There are over 300 prophesies in the OT that refer specifically to the Christ and all of them find their fulfilment in Jesus. The probability of that is one in one hundred million billion chance.

Why is that promise and the history of it so important? Well it speaks of God's reliability. God keeps his promises, unusual in a world where people don't.

It speaks to the love of God for the undeserving and is the offer of forgiveness and help for a life lived well. Wonderfully, all the promises that find fulfilment in Jesus Christ offer promise for your life and mine.

It's why Christians celebrate Christmas. Christmas holds out promise.