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Looking past the New Year’s Resolutions…..

We are now well into the year 2012!

Many people have breathed a sigh of relief that 2011 has finished. Quite a few people in our own parish said , in their conversations with us around Christmastime, that they were looking forward to a brand new start in the New Year.

Many were hoping that the slate would be wiped clean and that all the hardships of the last year would disappear.

The Lord recognises our need for being able to make new beginnings, to be able to recognise new stages in our lives and new commitments made. But none of these 'new beginnings' are to be made glibly; they are intended to be very deliberate actions and indeed are sometimes costly in time and effort.

We have prepared for and proclaimed the Lord's comings in Advent. We have celebrated our Lord's birth as the Babe of Bethlehem at Christmas. We have recognised more and more of God's Glory as we travel through Epiphany. And, now we are to begin our Lent journey. A journey that brings us face to face with the vastness of God's love and his plan of salvation for each and every one of us, our need of his forgiveness and salvation and our need to be 'born again'.

As we are reminded in John chapter 1, here is God's Word in action, the doing word, and through His death and endless life we have that new beginning, that new start, that rebirth, the new and lasting relationship with our God.

But this new start is not one that ignores the past or pretends that it never existed. The Lord deals with our sin by his death on the cross. The price of dealing with our sins cost our Lord all that pain and suffering and indeed his life. Broken relationships are being remade, we are being sanctified, we are embarked on our Christian life's journey with all its ups and downs. A journey that takes us through the 'green pastures' and through the 'valley of the shadow of death'.

The wonderful reality for the Christian is that we do not make this journey on our own. Our Lord is with us as our shepherd, our guide and our friend as well as our Saviour and King. From time to time it is good to pause and to realise afresh just how much the Lord has helped us up to this moment of time and that this gives us reassurance for the future.

The prophet, Samuel, (1 Samuel ch 7 verse 12), recognised the need to remember and recognise the Lord’s help when he dedicated a memorial stone which he called ‘Ebenezer’, which means 'hither to has the Lord helped us' as a #thank you’ and also as a spur and encouragement for his people to go on.

We look back and recognise all God’s blessings and provision and, indeed, his presence up to this moment of time and we can look with confidence to the future knowing that He will continue to help and bless.

‘Bonne continuation’ – as the French would say,

Phil

February 2012

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Advent  is the beginning of the Christian year.  The birth of Jesus signals a new start for us all.  If you look back over the difficult year with its upheavals in North Africa, the ongoing conflict in Afghanistan still taking too many of the lives our  young people and the gathering financial gloom that perplexes the financial buffs and brings bad news in the pages of the newspapers day after day,  most of us will gratefully reach out for that new start. Few of us would go so far to pitch our tents on the concrete and protest about the inequalities that are increasing in our society, but we recognise that something has to change.

There are three journeys to Bethlehem recorded in the bible. The first and most important was the one undertaken by Mary and Joseph as they went back to their ancestral home as demanded by the Roman authorities. It was a journey they must have undertaken reluctantly and doubtless with a few prayers that God would deal with people who push others around without any thought for their circumstances. Mary may spent some of the time as they travelled  to wherever the Romans dictated teaching the others her song: “He has put down the mighty from their seat and hath exalted the humble and meek. He has filled the hungry with good things and the rich he has sent empty away.”  For all the inconvenience of the journey there was hope of better things to come. God is not without power.

The second journey is that undertaken by the shepherds, leaving their flocks in the field, to travel to Bethlehem. There was stillness and the endless waiting that must be part of the life of one who watches over the sheep. There was an attentiveness, listening out for the noises of danger or the cry of a sheep in need. The silence was shattered by another world breaking in on the shepherds with good news of the birth of a saviour. “Come let us go straight to Bethlehem to see this thing that has happened, which the Lord has made known to us.” After sitting and waiting they are all caught up in a sudden rush of activity, and boredom replaced by excitement and expectancy as they hurried off.

The third journey ends up in Bethlehem after the birth of Jesus. The wise men may well have travelled furthest.  They are seeking a king, whose birth has been written in the stars. Again they would have had time to wonder, to doubt and yet a sense of expectancy carried them forward – at first to the wrong destination, the palace of a king, and afterwards to the backstreets of a village where the child lay. In preparation they had put gifts into their luggage to give to the child born to be king and once they had found him they not only offered their gifts, but they worshipped.

The journeys offer time to reflect, to wonder, to reform our values and to hope for a world transformed. If there is a positive to be gained from these difficult times it is that we will have less time to worry about the trappings of Christmas, more time to think about the people we love and how we can demonstrate that love without necessarily being caught up in the mad shopping spree.  I hope too that we can reflect on the life of God set free on the earth and how this renews and transforms our lives and drives us to journey towards a more just and peaceful world.

A very happy Christmas to you all and every blessing for the New Year.

Ted Goodyer

December 2011

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Parish Newsletter

The next MESSY CHURCH meeting will be on Thursday 26^th January, 2012 at Alverstoke Infant School.  There will be supervised activities for children in church during the 10.00a.m. Sunday Parish Communion.

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