Clergy Letter

Dear Friends,

Well, if nothing else, 2020 has been full of surprises. It was not the year any of us thought it would be, and our best laid plans of January are most likely unfulfilled. So it is a brave person indeed who dares to make predictions for 2021, but here goes... I have three...

Prediction 1: Our communities will learn to pull together in new ways. We have learned afresh this year what is important in life and we must embrace those wonderful aspects of ourselves which we have been reminded of. St Mary’s School takes as its vision statement the Fruit of the Spirit: “But the fruit of the Spirit is love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control.” My first prediction for 2021 is that this will prove prophetic, and that fruit will become more evident. Let us pray it is so, and encourage one another to bear this kind of fruit in our dealings with one another.

Prediction 2: We will look to a new political future. Whether any kind of meaningful Brexit deal emerges or not (and writing this in November, the details are still, depressingly, as opaque as they were back in 2016!) aspects of life and politics will change in 2021. A new U.S. President will be inaugurated in January, different in tone to their predecessor for sure, but populism around the globe hasn’t disappeared, and nor have the politics of hate, fear and division. Those voices are never far away, so our voices must sing a different song, and sing it louder! In our churches, we will continue to look to the future with hope, even as we lament with those who grieve and have a sense of loss, and we will try to recapture a sense of joy.

Prediction 3: God will go with us. Do I say that to reassure you, thinking that another challenging year lies ahead? Or do I say that triumphantly, confident that everything will get better in 2021 as evidence of divine blessing? Well... neither. The point isn’t that I am trying to be prophetic about what the year ahead holds. I know that God has been with us in our journey of the past year, every step of the way. The message of Christmas is that God is with us, whatever the world throws at us. In Jesus, God was revealed walking the earth among us as one of us, highlighting the reality that God is not distant, looking down from the sky on us. God is with us, down and dirty in the mess and chaos, the unpredictability, the joys, the hopes, the disappointments, the triumphs, the pain, the victories, the losses of life. God is with us in it all.

So, whatever 2020 has brought you, I hope you will look at Christmas a little differently this year. The true gift of Christmas is to know that we are loved: that we are not alone. God is with us. God’s love lives among us. Our calling is to love one another, and to bring alive that divine love in our village communities each and every day.

Merry Christmas to you all, and God bless you.

REV’D NICK