Dear Friends,
And so, we come to January 6th – 12th Night – 12 Days of Christmas Festivities have come to their traditional end. Liturgically speaking, it could be argued that ‘Christmas’ continues until the Festival of Candlemas, 2nd February, being 40 days after Jesus’ birth, the occasion of the end of the ritual period of purification required of any newly delivered mother, culminating in the baby Jesus being presented in the Temple, as described in Luke 2, verses 22 – 38. But more usually, 12th Night is the time for taking down the decorations, putting away the tree, collecting up the cards, & eating the last of the Mince Pies. The decorations have been taken down in the church building. Maybe because of the circumstances, they seemed more ‘beautiful’, more ‘appropriate’, more ‘significant’ than usual this last year. It has been a real shame that so few people were able to enjoy them, and to appreciate the effort that went into them. Once again, we owe a huge debt of gratitude to the team who worked so hard to organise everything. It was, as it is every year, very obviously a labour of love…Once again, we find ourselves in ‘lockdown’; not a brief ‘circuit breaker’ but one that is likely to last for months rather than weeks. We will all need to dig deep to draw on the resources necessary just to cope with the pressures that are bound to come with any period of prolonged ‘confinement’. And We should not underestimate the effort that this will demand of each one of us…Many of us will find it increasingly difficult. And we will need to support one another. Whether that be within the family home, our immediate neighbourhood, our local community, our church congregation. None of us is immune from the effects of what is happening around us; and for some of those effects, not even the promised vaccine will be sufficient…But at the same time, we should not allow ourselves to be overwhelmed. There is within nearly every one of us a basic resilience that can keep us going. Of course, the glass is never ‘half’ full, or ‘half’ empty – it is always more or less ‘full’ or more or less ‘empty’; however ‘empty’ it might seem to be right now, for all but a small number of us, it is not completely ‘empty’……None of us knows how all of this will end. And none of us should be so reckless to assume we do. But we do what we can, for ourselves and for each other. My hope and prayer for all of us, everyone who reads this letter, is that in some way or another we would sense the presence of God in our lives. No two of us are the same, and so for all of us, that sense of God’s presence will be unique, tailored to the needs of each one of us. Please, during these troubling times, don’t shut God out, but rather be prepared to let God in. And then, it will be between you/me and God. All we ask of each other is that we give God the opportunity to prove to be the God of grace, mercy, peace and love promised to us…In that Spirit, I wish you well…