Dear all,
Firstly, thank you everyone wo replied to last weeks letter. My ‘post-bag’ was bulging. Thanks’ to those who were concerned for me personally. Be assured I am ok. I wanted to draw attention to the fact that all of us will have been affected mentally and/or spiritually just by living through the Pandemic with all its necessary restrictions ……Anyway, good news. Whatever ‘Tier’ we will be placed in after December 2nd, we will all be allowed to attend Sunday worship in Church once again. We will restart on December 6th, @11am, with a Celebration of Advent Communion. Still no singing, and face-coverings still have to be worn. But whatever ‘Tier’ we are in will affect other activities being organised in and around Christmas So, when we get the news we will be able to ‘firm up’ on the arrangements, (or not!)…This coming Sunday is Advent Sunday, the beginning of a time of anticipation and preparation. We are look forward to celebrating the Birth of Jesus. But Advent Invites us to set the birth of Jesus within a wider context; daring us to believe that the baby born in the stable is the One who was ‘in the beginning with God’…the One ‘though whom all things were made’…’The Word becoming flesh’. But more than that, this Jesus is the One whose death we proclaim every time we celebrate Communion, ‘until He comes’. The One whose ‘second’ coming will usher in a ‘new heaven and a new earth’. All things will be made new…To affirm this is to demand that we widen our horizon, going beyond the reality of the ‘hear and now’. That is why, much of what is written about Advent is elevated above and beyond the mundane prose we use to describe our present reality. It dares us to embrace the poetry that can take us to an altogether different place…I give you, one such example…
‘…O King of our desire whom we despise,
King of the nations never on the throne,
Unfound foundation, cast-off cornerstone,
Rejected joiner, making many one,
You have no form or beauty for our eyes,
A King who comes to give away his crown,
A King within our rags of flesh and bone.
We pierce the flesh that pierces our disguise,
For we ourselves are found in you alone.
Come to us now and find in us your throne,
O King within the child within the clay,
O hidden King who shapes us in the play
Of all creation. Shape us for the day
Your coming Kingdom comes into its own…’