Vicars Letter Dec / Jan

Dear friends,

I’m just about to embark on my first official ‘Christmas shopping’ spree. This year we have agreed as a family to limit ourselves to so many £s per present- which will make the shopping more of a challenge! It will be interesting to see if the credit crunch we have heard so much about will indeed curb retail spending this year.

One of the family’s ,whose baby I recently baptised, spoke of a poll that had been taken asking children under a certain age; “Whose Birthday do we celebrate on Christmas day?”

70% apparently responded with ‘Father Christmas’.

It seems that the true meaning of Christmas has layers of other meanings wrapped over it in our world today. And these wrappings are incredibly ‘fun’, attractive and inviting in the dark and grey days of Winter. (I too love it when the children at School sing ‘Rudolf the red nosed reindeer at the top of their voices!) But in amidst the frivolity and fizz of the wonderful days leading up to Christmas my heart, like many of ours, returns to the Christ in Christ-mas.

There is a moment in Midnight Mass of hushed expectation. One’s mind returns to the first Christmas Eve. When a baby’s cry pierces the night gloom; when an army of angels alarm ordinary shepherds on the hillside with their triumphant song; when an act of love of such gigantic proportions takes place in a small back street in Bethlehem.

For some of you all the ‘Christmas cheer’around may just accentuate missing someone dear to you. Or it may be filled with anxiety as you look to what the New Year may bring. Or a sense of unfairness as we who have so much are met with pictures of famine and violence on our TV screens. Or you may be riding on the crest of a wave and all is well with you- which is great!

Into this world Jesus came as a refugee, born in poverty, but born into a loving warm family. And as his little hand, like every little baby’s hand, reached out to his Mum and Dad and bystanders around, so God reaches out to us. Not just as a little baby boy, but as Immanuel , God with us. Feeling our gladness, receiving and sharing our sadness.

There is a danger that we restrict God to the size of a helpless baby. But the Jesus I speak to each day, in prayer, is not a baby. And if we leave Jesus in the crib at the end of Christmas the lasting significance of ‘God with us’ is abandoned- like wrapping paper, or the unwanted gift.

Over the Advent and Christmas period there is plenty of opportunity to ‘tune in’ to the original Christmas. As our hearts and minds are prepared for his coming during Advent, and we celebrate the joy of his coming in Christmas week. Christmas is God’s answer- and if we leave the Christ out of Christmas, we turn away from the light who is come into the world, and play with smaller lights that are here for a while but then are gone.

Please honour the Lord with your company this Christmas and make room in your heart for him. And don’t leave him in the crib when the festivities are over and the decorations are packed away for another year. Epiphany follows Christmas- the light of Christ shines on all of us close by and all of us who feel far away. The invitation from God to us all is to walk into the New Year confidently with our hand in His, the author of peace.

And I said to the man who stood at the gate of the year:
"Give me a light, that I may tread safely into the unknown!"
And he replied:
"Go out into the darkness and put your hand into the Hand of God.
That shall be to you better than light and safer than a known way." *

Every blessing to you for a Happy and Meaningful Christmas and a New Year where the knowledge of God’s love and care for you brings you peace,

God bless you,

Revd Claire

(* by Minnie Louise Harkins 1875-1957)

Christmas Services

Christmas Services

Sunday 30th November 2008
Advent Sunday
11am Holy Communion at Ashby St Ledgers Church
6-30pm Advent Carols
Saturday 6th December 2008
7-30pm Brass Band Concert, Tickets available on the door
Sunday 7th December 2008
11am Holy Communion with Kids Club
6-30pm Evensong
Sunday 14th December 2008
8am Holy Communion
11am Family Service
3pm Christingle
Thursday 18th December 2008
7-30pm Nine Lessons & Carols
Friday 19th December 2008
6-30pm meet at Church - Carol Singing around the village
Sunday 21st December 2008
8am Holy Communion
11am Holy Communion with Kids Club
Wednesday 24th December 2008
3pm Crib Service
11-30pm Midnight
Thursday 25th December 2008
8am Holy Communion
11am Christmas Family Communion
Sunday 28th December 2008
9-30am Team Holy Communion Service at Holy Cross Church, Daventry