They say that Christmas is a time for children – the Christmas lights are up around town, the TV adverts have been going on about toys and games for months, and the excitement is building up for the big day.
My children are actually very good at waiting patiently for Christmas to arrive. They write their lists, and then wait expectantly for all the presents and food and parties to arrive, confident that Santa, or their parents, are going to deliver just what they have wanted and waited for.
I think adults have a lot to learn from children at this time of year, after all, Jesus did call us to have a childlike faith. I know how easy it is to be worn down with the busy-ness and work of Christmas, to lose sight of the real meaning, wonder and awe of this time of year.
That’s why I think the season of Advent is so important. It is a time of waiting and preparing ourselves for what is to come – and I do believe that we cannot really appreciate the wonder of Christmas unless we have held ourselves in the in-between time of Advent.
Week by week we will be reminded of how God spoke through the prophets of the arrival of the promised King, and God’s great plan of salvation. This child will be no ordinary human – he will be God with us, Emmanuel. And while we wait, we make ourselves ready for the coming King, in repentance and perhaps by spending more time with our Bibles and in prayer.
Finally – after all our waiting, Christmas arrives; and just like our children we can be confident that we haven’t been forgotten. There is a present ready for us – a gift of God for us and the whole world – Jesus the King.
I hope we can make an effort to enter into the season of Advent, to be as a child, waiting open hearted and expectant for the real present, Jesus, to arrive. We know that where meek souls will receive Him, still, the dear Christ enters in.
Have a happy Advent, Christmas and New Year.
We all need friends.
We begin November with the church festival of All Saints, or All Hallows, which is the feast of all the redeemed, known and unknown, who are now in heaven. This feast day first began in the East, perhaps as early as the 5th century, as commemorating ‘the martyrs of the whole world’, and we can see in it the fulfilment of the hopes of Easter and Pentecost and indeed of Christ’s redemptive sacrifice and resurrection. It's a fitting start to this season of remembrance.
The ‘saints’ do not belong to any religious tradition, they belong to us all, and their lives and witness to Christ can be appreciated by all Christians. Richard Baxter, writing in the 17th century, wrote this:
He wants not friends that hath thy love,
And made converse and walk with thee,
And with thy saints here and above,
With whom for ever I must be...
As for my friends, they are not lost;
The several vessels of thy fleet,
Though parted now, by tempests tost,
Shall safely in thy haven meet....
The heavenly hosts, world without end,
Shall be my company above;
And thou, my best and surest Friend,
Who shall divide me from thy love?*
I find this an encouragement – that those we love, and countless other saints are with us in fellowship through life. We all need the support and fellowship of others to get things done – as we’ve found out in our ArtsFest and in our Harvest Festival celebrations – team work is important, and together we can achieve amazing things.
I hope these words will be a help to all those coming to our Remembrance Sunday and memorial services, and that everyone coming into our churches will discover just how loving and welcoming we are.
The ‘saints’ do not belong to any religious tradition, they belong to us all, and their lives and witness to Christ can be appreciated by all Christians. Richard Baxter, writing in the 17th century, wrote this:
He wants not friends that hath thy love,
And made converse and walk with thee,
And with thy saints here and above,
With whom for ever I must be...
As for my friends, they are not lost;
The several vessels of thy fleet,
Though parted now, by tempests tost,
Shall safely in thy haven meet....
The heavenly hosts, world without end,
Shall be my company above;
And thou, my best and surest Friend,
Who shall divide me from thy love?*
I find this an encouragement – that those we love, and countless other saints are with us in fellowship through life. We all need the support and fellowship of others to get things done – as we’ve found out in our ArtsFest and in our Harvest Festival celebrations – team work is important, and together we can achieve amazing things.
I hope these words will be a help to all those coming to our Remembrance Sunday and memorial services, and that everyone coming into our churches will discover just how loving and welcoming we are.
Thanks for life!
And so we enter the month of October, and a busy time in the life of the Church. At the beginning of the month we are into the All Saints' ArtsFest – a celebration of creativity, art and design for all the community. Then we have our Harvest Festivals in Church and the Harvest Supper at St. Peter's – after all the hard work a chance for some fellowship over a hearty meal. A lot of hard work has gone into these events, and we have a lot to be thankful for.
I hadn’t realised that our Harvest Festival is a comparatively recent church service. Less than 200 years ago, harvest was not formally ‘celebrated’ in church, but in the taverns and on village greens of the countryside, with wild drinking and eating before the harshness of winter set in.
Then in 1834 an eccentric clergyman called the Rev Robert Stephen Hawker arrived in Morwenstowe, a tiny hamlet of a few farms perched high on the windswept cliffs of the north Cornish coast.
Rural life in those days was harsh, and Hawker soon realised the sheer effort needed to survive in those parts. Harvest was the only thing that got people through the winter: a poor one meant starvation. Each bad year Hawker buried some of his congregation.
But the summer of 1843 was perfect, and the harvest that year was exceptionally bountiful. The people of Morwenstowe were getting set to celebrate with their usual abandon, when Hawker stepped in. Who, he asked, did they think had given them the harvest? Were they not going to even say ‘thank you’ to Him?
Abashed, the people came to church, and Hawker led them in giving thanks to God for his rich blessing upon them. The ‘Christian’ Harvest Festival had arrived – in Morwenstowe.
Nowadays Harvest Festivals are enjoyed by both regular church-goers and visitors, making it one of the most popular services in the church year – even in the middle of industrial Crewe. Maybe people appreciate something that re-connects us with a simpler way of life, and with the basic stuff of our existence – food.
Of course, in the Bible Jesus reminded us that we cannot live just on bread alone – we need more than this to be truly alive – we need God in our lives. Jesus called himself the ‘bread of heaven’ – the one that brings us life and sustains us all. So while we celebrate all these good things this month, let us not forget that to be fully alive we need Jesus, and all we now have comes from him.
I hadn’t realised that our Harvest Festival is a comparatively recent church service. Less than 200 years ago, harvest was not formally ‘celebrated’ in church, but in the taverns and on village greens of the countryside, with wild drinking and eating before the harshness of winter set in.
Then in 1834 an eccentric clergyman called the Rev Robert Stephen Hawker arrived in Morwenstowe, a tiny hamlet of a few farms perched high on the windswept cliffs of the north Cornish coast.
Rural life in those days was harsh, and Hawker soon realised the sheer effort needed to survive in those parts. Harvest was the only thing that got people through the winter: a poor one meant starvation. Each bad year Hawker buried some of his congregation.
But the summer of 1843 was perfect, and the harvest that year was exceptionally bountiful. The people of Morwenstowe were getting set to celebrate with their usual abandon, when Hawker stepped in. Who, he asked, did they think had given them the harvest? Were they not going to even say ‘thank you’ to Him?
Abashed, the people came to church, and Hawker led them in giving thanks to God for his rich blessing upon them. The ‘Christian’ Harvest Festival had arrived – in Morwenstowe.
Nowadays Harvest Festivals are enjoyed by both regular church-goers and visitors, making it one of the most popular services in the church year – even in the middle of industrial Crewe. Maybe people appreciate something that re-connects us with a simpler way of life, and with the basic stuff of our existence – food.
Of course, in the Bible Jesus reminded us that we cannot live just on bread alone – we need more than this to be truly alive – we need God in our lives. Jesus called himself the ‘bread of heaven’ – the one that brings us life and sustains us all. So while we celebrate all these good things this month, let us not forget that to be fully alive we need Jesus, and all we now have comes from him.
Creativity & God
As we come to holiday time again it's a chance for rest and recreation. That word ‘recreation’ shows that it's about allowing God to create us anew – physically in rest, but also spiritually. We need this re-creation after all the work of the last few months.
At the end of the school term I’ve been to see many displays, presentations and performances. Each has been wonderful – perhaps the best was Gainsborough Primary’s ‘Joseph’ staged at South Cheshire College. It's been fantastic to share with teachers, parents and children in this explosion of artistic talent and creativity.
We believe that creativity is a gift from God. Indeed, part of what it means to be made in the image of God is that we are endowed with the gift of creativity that is ours to use freely. Every song written, every poem; every painting or sculpture; every construction of stone and steel or of the mind; every thought, word and deed is an outcome of the great truth that we are made in the image of our Creator.
I hope you will come and share this truth with us, and marvel at human creativity in the All Saints' ArtsFest – and so I’d like to leave you with a poem by Gerard Kelly, about our creative God: This God
This God,
Who watches worlds,
Sees my heart.
This careful calculator,
Counting countless millions,
Counts me in.
This artist,
Whose canvas outstretches
Eternity at both ends;
Whose palette out-colours planets,
Paints my portrait.
This lover,
Who dreams in universes,
Dreams of me.
This creator,
Whose breadth of vision spans time
And spawns a cosmos;
Whose woven tapestry of purpose,
More compound than chaos,
Eclipsing complexity,
Rolls out like a highway through history;
Whose heartbeat deafens supernovas:
This father
Kisses me.
This playwright,
Playing
With the deaths and entrances of stars;
Scripting
The end from the beginning;
Knowing
The purpose of the play:
Watches
My feeble audition,
And writes
Me
In.
You can find more on Gerard Kelly's poetry here
At the end of the school term I’ve been to see many displays, presentations and performances. Each has been wonderful – perhaps the best was Gainsborough Primary’s ‘Joseph’ staged at South Cheshire College. It's been fantastic to share with teachers, parents and children in this explosion of artistic talent and creativity.
We believe that creativity is a gift from God. Indeed, part of what it means to be made in the image of God is that we are endowed with the gift of creativity that is ours to use freely. Every song written, every poem; every painting or sculpture; every construction of stone and steel or of the mind; every thought, word and deed is an outcome of the great truth that we are made in the image of our Creator.
I hope you will come and share this truth with us, and marvel at human creativity in the All Saints' ArtsFest – and so I’d like to leave you with a poem by Gerard Kelly, about our creative God: This God
This God,
Who watches worlds,
Sees my heart.
This careful calculator,
Counting countless millions,
Counts me in.
This artist,
Whose canvas outstretches
Eternity at both ends;
Whose palette out-colours planets,
Paints my portrait.
This lover,
Who dreams in universes,
Dreams of me.
This creator,
Whose breadth of vision spans time
And spawns a cosmos;
Whose woven tapestry of purpose,
More compound than chaos,
Eclipsing complexity,
Rolls out like a highway through history;
Whose heartbeat deafens supernovas:
This father
Kisses me.
This playwright,
Playing
With the deaths and entrances of stars;
Scripting
The end from the beginning;
Knowing
The purpose of the play:
Watches
My feeble audition,
And writes
Me
In.
You can find more on Gerard Kelly's poetry here
The power of thin air.
I love aircraft and flying – I even tried to join the RAF as a pilot. From being an Air Cadet as a young man, crashing hang-gliders as a student, to going on holiday by air – I love it. I remember going on a huge Boeing 747 some years ago – and gently hopping up and down in the aisle – just amazed that it was so solid and stable.
What is it that can keep hundreds of tons of metal up in the air? The answer is thin air, the wind.
When I wake up in the morning, I sometimes turn on the TV to see what the weather is doing. There are some mornings that I don't even have to look at the TV to know that the wind is blowing because I can hear it! I can hear it whistling through the trees, down the chimney, and around the windows and doors. We can't see the wind, but we can see it blowing trees and fences, and feel it against our faces.
On 31st May our church celebrates Pentecost Sunday. It was on the day of Pentecost that God sent his Holy Spirit to the church. The Bible tells us that the apostles were all gathered together when suddenly there was a sound like a mighty, rushing wind. Then, it says, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit is like the wind, we can't see him, but we can know that he is there, just like we can know that the wind is there.
We can know that the Holy Spirit is there because we can hear him speaking into our hearts and making us alive to God. We can see him moving people to do God's will -- we can't see God, but we can see people doing things that God's Holy Spirit has moved them to do.
We know that without fresh air everything becomes flat, stale and lifeless – and the same applies to human beings and the church without God’s Holy Spirit. May God throw open the windows of our hearts and our church and blow in some of his freshness, power and life at Pentecost.
What is it that can keep hundreds of tons of metal up in the air? The answer is thin air, the wind.
When I wake up in the morning, I sometimes turn on the TV to see what the weather is doing. There are some mornings that I don't even have to look at the TV to know that the wind is blowing because I can hear it! I can hear it whistling through the trees, down the chimney, and around the windows and doors. We can't see the wind, but we can see it blowing trees and fences, and feel it against our faces.
On 31st May our church celebrates Pentecost Sunday. It was on the day of Pentecost that God sent his Holy Spirit to the church. The Bible tells us that the apostles were all gathered together when suddenly there was a sound like a mighty, rushing wind. Then, it says, they were filled with the Holy Spirit. God's Holy Spirit is like the wind, we can't see him, but we can know that he is there, just like we can know that the wind is there.
We can know that the Holy Spirit is there because we can hear him speaking into our hearts and making us alive to God. We can see him moving people to do God's will -- we can't see God, but we can see people doing things that God's Holy Spirit has moved them to do.
We know that without fresh air everything becomes flat, stale and lifeless – and the same applies to human beings and the church without God’s Holy Spirit. May God throw open the windows of our hearts and our church and blow in some of his freshness, power and life at Pentecost.
They're Not There!
Truth is something that we are uncomfortable with in our society nowadays. We are happy with each of us having our own, personal, individual truth – but many think THE TRUTH is only for fundamentalists to talk about.
I'm all for allowing personal choice, but I think as Christians we need to stand up for the fact there is TRUTH. Of course, we are not the only ones in possession of truth – but as we come to Easter, and the resurrection of Jesus, we are celebrating something that is amazing and true.
Gautama Buddha, Guru Nanak, the prophet Mohammed - you can visit the tombs of the founders of all the great world religions except one. Or rather, you can visit his tomb, but it’s conspicuously empty. It's the truth that Jesus’ body WAS NOT THERE which Christians all over the world celebrate at Easter.
When a group of women disciples visited the tomb of Jesus on the third day after his death, they were surprised to find the huge stone at its entrance rolled back. They were even more surprised to discover a ‘young man in white robes’ sitting inside it. The third surprise - the greatest of them all - was what he told them. ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified’, he said. ‘He is not here; he is risen.’
The women had come to anoint a corpse, but instead they were to celebrate a new life. 'Go and tell his disciples'. Nothing could more powerfully express the heart of the Easter message than those simple but life-changing words: ‘Not here.’
Rather like those women, at Easter many of us go to the cemetery or the crematorium as an act of love, to leave some flowers and perhaps say a prayer at the grave of a loved one. But in our heart of hearts we know that they are not there. They have ‘gone’ - but where?
According to the apostle Paul, they have ‘departed to be with Christ, which is far better’. Perhaps the very best notice for the gates of a churchyard would be those simple words: ‘They are not here. They are risen’ - seven words that speak the heart of the Easter faith, for what was true of Jesus is true for all those whose faith is in the risen Saviour.
That - not hot cross buns, chocolate rabbits or Easter Eggs - is what Easter is all about. Death -- the Final Enemy has been defeated.
I'm all for allowing personal choice, but I think as Christians we need to stand up for the fact there is TRUTH. Of course, we are not the only ones in possession of truth – but as we come to Easter, and the resurrection of Jesus, we are celebrating something that is amazing and true.
Gautama Buddha, Guru Nanak, the prophet Mohammed - you can visit the tombs of the founders of all the great world religions except one. Or rather, you can visit his tomb, but it’s conspicuously empty. It's the truth that Jesus’ body WAS NOT THERE which Christians all over the world celebrate at Easter.
When a group of women disciples visited the tomb of Jesus on the third day after his death, they were surprised to find the huge stone at its entrance rolled back. They were even more surprised to discover a ‘young man in white robes’ sitting inside it. The third surprise - the greatest of them all - was what he told them. ‘You are looking for Jesus of Nazareth, who was crucified’, he said. ‘He is not here; he is risen.’
The women had come to anoint a corpse, but instead they were to celebrate a new life. 'Go and tell his disciples'. Nothing could more powerfully express the heart of the Easter message than those simple but life-changing words: ‘Not here.’
Rather like those women, at Easter many of us go to the cemetery or the crematorium as an act of love, to leave some flowers and perhaps say a prayer at the grave of a loved one. But in our heart of hearts we know that they are not there. They have ‘gone’ - but where?
According to the apostle Paul, they have ‘departed to be with Christ, which is far better’. Perhaps the very best notice for the gates of a churchyard would be those simple words: ‘They are not here. They are risen’ - seven words that speak the heart of the Easter faith, for what was true of Jesus is true for all those whose faith is in the risen Saviour.
That - not hot cross buns, chocolate rabbits or Easter Eggs - is what Easter is all about. Death -- the Final Enemy has been defeated.
Get rid of the clutter!
One of the things I hate in life is clutter! I hate seeing things out of place and spread all over, piles of unread papers, books and CDs, even left over wrapping paper from Christmas! Unfortunately my office is full of clutter, and every now and then I blow my top and do some tidying up.
It's surprising how we take on these little bits and pieces almost un-noticed, and they just get dumped, getting in the way, often a trip hazard. I'm one of those who thinks everything should be tidy and have a place, even if that place is the bin. So, hopefully I shall find some spare time to have a spring clean in the next few weeks and I'm sure I'll feel better for it.
This made me think that the same thing applies to our spiritual lives too. I know as I go through life that my life gets very cluttered, I take on all kinds of bad habits and activities almost un-noticed. These things clutter up my life, often getting in the way of more useful things I should do, and sometimes causing me to trip-up. It may be watching too much TV, unhelpful stuff on the internet, or bad habits.
Maybe we need a spiritual spring-clean? A time to throw out the clutter of our lives, so we can be healthier in body, mind and spirit. The Christian season of Lent is a good time for reviewing our lives, taking stock of the clutter and sorting it out. It's not about giving up everything we like, as much as doing something positive with our time and energy.
The Church of England has a 'Love Life, Live Lent’ programme, that promotes the idea that doing something positive for friends, neighbours or the wider local community. Suggested acts of kindness include having a clear out of unwanted clothes and toys and donating them to a charity shop, producing simple home-made gifts for Mothering Sunday, creating a prayer space in the understairs cupboard, making a bird cake or learning some basic first aid skills.
As the Archbishop of York said: "With God's help we can change the world for good a little bit every day.” Find out more at the campaign website - www.livelent.net, and this year live more at Lent.
It's surprising how we take on these little bits and pieces almost un-noticed, and they just get dumped, getting in the way, often a trip hazard. I'm one of those who thinks everything should be tidy and have a place, even if that place is the bin. So, hopefully I shall find some spare time to have a spring clean in the next few weeks and I'm sure I'll feel better for it.
This made me think that the same thing applies to our spiritual lives too. I know as I go through life that my life gets very cluttered, I take on all kinds of bad habits and activities almost un-noticed. These things clutter up my life, often getting in the way of more useful things I should do, and sometimes causing me to trip-up. It may be watching too much TV, unhelpful stuff on the internet, or bad habits.
Maybe we need a spiritual spring-clean? A time to throw out the clutter of our lives, so we can be healthier in body, mind and spirit. The Christian season of Lent is a good time for reviewing our lives, taking stock of the clutter and sorting it out. It's not about giving up everything we like, as much as doing something positive with our time and energy.
The Church of England has a 'Love Life, Live Lent’ programme, that promotes the idea that doing something positive for friends, neighbours or the wider local community. Suggested acts of kindness include having a clear out of unwanted clothes and toys and donating them to a charity shop, producing simple home-made gifts for Mothering Sunday, creating a prayer space in the understairs cupboard, making a bird cake or learning some basic first aid skills.
As the Archbishop of York said: "With God's help we can change the world for good a little bit every day.” Find out more at the campaign website - www.livelent.net, and this year live more at Lent.
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