Sometime over the festive season I am sure you will watch that classic movie “It’s a Wonderful Life”.

Jimmy Stewart speaking about it once said: “The character I played was George Bailey, an ordinary kind of fella who thinks he’s never done anything in life.

“His dreams of becoming a famous architect, of travelling the world have not been fulfilled.

“Instead he feels trapped in an ordinary job in a small town. And when faced with a crisis he feels he has failed everyone and seeks to end it.”

That is when his guardian angel comes down on Christmas Eve to show him what his small town would be like without him. The angel takes him back through his life to show how his ordinary everyday efforts are really big things.

He shows how George Bailey’s loyalty to the building society has saved families and homes and how his kindness has changed the lives of others and made his town a better place.

There is nothing phenomenal about the film. It’s simply about an ordinary man who discovers that living each day with a concern for others, can make for a truly “wonderful life”.

Likewise there are no superstars in the Christmas story.

A stable, a manger, shepherds in the field, a humble couple who can’t even get a bed for the night and of course, the baby. The baby that would grow up to be a great warrior or king. That was what his country was waiting for. Instead they got a carpenter.

You generally don’t expect the guy who’s doing your kitchen cabinets to save the world. But that’s the point. It’s ordinary people in ordinary places who change things in the community and indeed in the world.

But maybe there is another message we need to hear from this timeless story.

“No room for them in the inn.” Those words have touched hearts for 2,000 years. It should be a call for all us to have room in our hearts for those that need us.

Amidst, at times, the artificial happiness of the season there are many in our community for whom there is “no room”. Those that it is easy to ignore as the carols play in the shopping centre. Those who will sleep rough in our town centres. The women who hide the bruises behind carefully applied make up. The ashamed addict who shuffles past us. The young person who is tormented on social media.

It would be my hope that is some small way we might have room in our hearts for those who feel there is, for them, no room.