Our Christmas decorations may never quite have the power and dynamism of God’s but we can make them part of our conscious decision to live in God’s world as people who can join in with the activity of its maker. We can hang up our decorations, year by year, to celebrate with joy the creation and recreation of the world. And when we take the decorations down again to put them away for another year, we can continue to live in the world that God decorates for us, and be part of the ongoing work of creation and recreation. We know we don’t have to be anything special to join in on what God was is doing. No one who took part in the first Christmas story was famous for anything else at all. We can look at the world, eagerly watching for God’s work, appreciating what is there, and knowing that it is still in progress and we are part of it; but knowing, too, that it is not our creation but God’s. If we come to our world seeing both its freshness and its eternity, we may begin to bring to it, day by day, the awed joy that we bring to the temporary lights and candles of Christmas…
Jane Williams
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mage: Juletræslys (Danish) - Christmas tree candle.
Photo: Malene Thyssen, 2005, http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/User:Malene. Used under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported licence.
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In St Mary’s prayer cycle for this month, today we pray for people who are lonely and people spending Christmas alone.
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In these unprecedented times, St Mary’s is reaching out and supporting our community in many ways, especially online. But with activities in our buildings greatly restricted, we no longer receive the previous level of financial support from collections at Services, nor from hiring out the church and hall buildings.
If you can help us financially to continue to offer Christ's love to our community in these difficult times, as those before us have done down the centuries, please consider making a donation by debit/credit card and to Gift Aid it if possible, by clicking this link to 'givealittle':
Thank you!
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