This year's offering under the banner "Christmas Starts with Christ" is dividing opinion among those are are already comitted followers of Jesus aka Christians.

Some are delighted to see it taking on the big retailers and playing them at their own game whilst others are disappointed that it is too white middle class and lacking in prophetic edge.

See what you think:

That God can speak through this, I have no doubt - but I sense God may speak through other adverts also.

I like the baby's chuckle at the end - this reminder that Jesus was a real baby, not a doll or a no-crying-he-makes lines in a song.

I am amused that the 'church' is using a Frankie Goes to Hollywood tune whilst Sainsbury's are using an old redemption hymn "Leaning on the Everlasting Arms"

I'd have prefered a less opulent beginning and a more authentically middle-eastern looking Mary & Joseph in a less clinical stable... and perhaps that's the nub of my disquiet... I'm not entirely sure what this says to the poor and marginalised people for whom Jesus clearly had huge concern.

Perhaps the key is who the advert is aimed at, and how they will recieve it, not how I or any other Christian insider feel about it.  If it sparks a new or renewed interest in Jesus in the heart or mind of one person, then it's done its job.

BPW 179 "Thou didst leave thy throne and thy kingly crown" has survived the worst excesses of the, often unhelpful, re-working to modern English that has resulted in odd variants of many better known carols.

Strictly, only the first two verses relate to Christmas, but the recurrent theme of Jesus being unwelcome, unaccepted and even homeless carries through the rest of the hymn, which works it's way, very swiftly, through his entire ministry.

No room to be born, nowhere permanent to live during his earthly ministry, abandoned at calvary...

This hymn is explicitly a personal response to the despised and rejected Jesus - there IS space in MY heart for you.

Is there, though? Or are we so cynical and world weary that the story no longer moves us?

And, I wonder, just how much room to I allow Jesus to occupy in my heart?  Who and what is jostling for my love, my embrace?  And, if Jesus comes to us in other people, who is it that I rejct, and in so-doing reject him?

Hmmm. I love this song, but today it feels very challenging!

The electric keyboard accompaniment on this recording is not the greatest thing to listen to, but the words surely transcend that: