1 minute read
Pause for Thought
Revd. Kate Konrad, Acting Minister Cheap Street Church & Chair of Sherborne Churches Together
Are you organised yet? Have you made your list(s) and checked it twice? Are you the mega-organised type, or a last-minute person waiting to catch a bargain? Either way remember Christmas is all about spending!
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Perhaps not this year, as we grapple with the huge cost-of-living crisis might we, at last, be able to get off the spending merry-go-round? Yes, even for the children. If you don’t think Christmas is about getting into debt but about family, I hope you have had the family arguments about whose turn it is this year. My husband’s family used to shuttle between both sets of grandparents, changing the children in the back of the car out of the clothes the first set of grandparents bought into the ones the others bought.
After all, Christmas is all about getting stressed trying to meet everyone’s expectations.
Stop the world I want to get off! Surely there has to be more.
We tell ourselves each year it will be different. But to make it different requires an act of will, a decision, a choice. My challenge to you is to put in your diary an appointment with yourself to take time to breathe deeply and to reflect on what really matters. It’s not easy to do. But when you know what’s really important, just do that.
This week I listened to the story of a man who read a book one lunchtime and fell in love with the pink-headed duck, that is thought to be extinct, and has plunged all his energy, time, and money for two decades into trying to discover if it’s still out there. Waiting.
Advent is all about waiting. What are you waiting for? What is really important to you? Do you want to know if there’s a God? And if you think there is a God, how do you relate to him? If you have got this far, and are not ignoring the question, why not dare to make space for him to encounter you this Christmas? You might even find he loves you. Yes, even you.
cheapstreetchurch.co.uk
WISHING YOU A WONDERFUL CHRISTMAS AND A HEALTHY, HAPPY NEW YEAR
