Advent Day 11 - Light

Hark the herald angels sing has surely the most profound and deep theology we sing and share in these weeks - "light and life to all he brings, risen with healing in his wings."

I love driving in the dark in these weeks and seeing the lights around me on houses. This is the lights of love tree outside the Methodist Church in Ninfield in our Circuit. The local hospice organises services in this area and trees and Ninfield has a tree for the first time this year and they had a good time on Sunday remembering loved ones and switching on the tree lights. 

This will be a strange Christmas for many people. We hear of war and terrorism in the world on a daily basis. People in Cumbria near Christmas find businesses and homes ruined post flooding. People who have lost loved ones in the year find the first Christmas with an empty place at the table painful. Others get very unwell because of the pressure on them to do it properly. 

But it is into darkness and pain and fear that God comes. And I believe one light can make a difference. How we light up life for others matters but also how we receive the light into our own darkness is important. I treasure my very special friends, my four lovely churches, people who make me laugh and dance with joy. I hold onto a God who brings light and answers when we least expect them or think the future is dark and unclear. 

The little church at Ninfield when I arrived in the Circuit four years ago were a lovely group of people with an afternoon service but not a lot else. They were determined to follow where the light of Christ might lead them. They have working with my predecessor Ian, then with me and now with their new minister Tricia, changed the time of their worship, started a cafe worship once a month, refurbished their premises, begun Messy Church which has grown through partnership with the local primary school, formed a new Messy group for year 6 children, and have received new members and on Sunday have a baptism of an 11 year old. And people in the village are perhaps for the first time in many years noticing they are there, the light shining out of a little group of faithful people who simply want to be there for others and enthuse about being there for others. So it is highly appropriate a tree about lights of love stands outside this chapel.

We need the light and life and healing wings in a very dark world. Some of us are mad enough to believe the darkness of pain and death and floods and bombs and knife crime and crazy billionnaires in America talking utter bilge will not have the last word. Christmas is about God coming to transform the dark. We always picture the Christmas story in the dark and in the cold - I guess it was neither, but I think it helps with the message it brings.