Dear Friends…

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Christmas approaches and with it another New Year. The signs of the approaching season begin to be all around us – the trees and lights appearing in shops, streets, and homes. It’s cheering to see the lights illuminating the dark and ever increasingly shorter days. Of course, in our part of the world, we celebrate Christmas in the darkest and coldest time of the year whilst others will be experiencing long bright, hot days. Wherever we are though, the world and lives of others and ourselves can seem to be overcome by darkness, especially as we see so much happening which leaves us saddened and anxious. Perhaps we struggle to see any ‘light’ but it only takes the smallest of ‘lights’ to overcome the darkness.
 

We read in John’s Gospel of the light that came at that first Christmas, words I find worth holding onto in the darkest moments:
In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. He was in the beginning with God. All things came into being through him, and without him not one thing came into being. What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it.

 

Christmas is the story of God who breaks into the world then and now in Jesus who comes as the Light of the world and whose light has continued to shine in the darkness, bringing hope, light, love, and faith to people’s lives, to our lives, at Christmas and every day into 2024.
 

With my very best wishes to you and your families for Christmas and the New Year,

Deacon Jackie Fowler