The Eight O’Clock
- Origin unknown, sent in by Sheila Scheppening
News February 2018 8 am Service, Christ Church, Kenilworth
Christmas Ponderings And Prayers On Christmas morning I was awake by 4.30, with a particular carol
going round recurringly in my head: Holy Child, how still you lie, safe the manger, soft the hay; faint across the eastern sky breaks the dawn of Christmas Day. I lay and pictured the sky lightening over that small town in Israel more than two thousand years ago, and was visited afresh by the realisation that, as the sun rose on that day, the world would never be the same again. It was, indeed, a New Day. The Prince had come! Aslan was on the move! The deep, deep Magic of Christmas had begun for us all. What can one do except join the angels in awe and wonder, crying Glory to God in the highest! Then I thought about the way Christmas is celebrated in today’s world, and felt so sad and sorry for the many people who haven’t understood that real, deep Magic of Christmas, and who, instead, buy into the cheap, watered-down, tinselled-up, sheer saccharine idiocy created by those faithful agents of the father of lies: commerce and Hollywood, and who mistake that for “the magic of Christmas”. No wonder so many people hate Christmas! That kind of magic can only disappoint and disillusion, can only leave you feeling spent and empty and possibly hung-over. So what is the answer? Do we abandon Christmas celebrations and withdraw in holier-than-thou isolation? Do we sit in condemnation of any celebration that doesn’t meet our standards? I confess that there is something in that which I find a bit tempting. But then I remember how, when Jesus was entering Jerusalem on a donkey amidst shouts of praise and blessings from the crowds, the Pharisees wanted Him to rebuke them. Jesus’s reply was that, if they kept quiet the stones themselves would cry out [Luke 10:40]. And I realised that that is what Christmas is about—people may not understand why they are celebrating, but there is a sense in which they can’t help themselves—if they didn’t celebrate, the stones themselves would cry out in worship. The earth itself rejoices at this incredible miracle of salvation, and there is nothing to be done to stop it, and everything to be done to enter into it with heart and soul and voice of praise and thankfulness! So what we do about those who don’t ‘get it’ is, we pray for them, pray that there will come a time when they do understand, when they can rejoice alongside us, when the true Magic enters their souls, lights up their eyes and changes their lives forever. Then I thought about the other thing the angels sang: Peace to all people on earth. I thought about this troubled, divided, un-peaceful world and wondered why it was so, and what had gone wrong. I came to the conclusion that the Peace that the angels wished for us was not so much a ‘happening’ as a ‘doing’, that we, who are the children of the Prince of Peace, are to be the Peace. Each of us is February 2018 Eight O’Clock News
a piece of the Peace, a carrier of the Magic. Each of us is a channel through which the glory of God can be shone into the darkness of this world. And so my prayer for myself, and for all of us as this new year is getting underway, is that Jesus will so fill us all with the joy and peace of His birth that we will become pieces of the Peace to our families, our friends, our work colleagues, to all the people we serve in any way, and specially to those we know who have not yet understood the Magic. May the Prince of Peace reign triumphant in your heart and mine in the teeth of whatever odds life may throw at us in 2018. - Sally Palmer
A Franciscan Blessing May God bless you with discomfort At easy answers, half-truths, And superficial relationships So that you may live Deep within your heart. May God bless you with anger At injustice, oppression, And exploitation of people, So that you may work for Justice, freedom and peace. May God bless you with tears, To shed for those who suffer pain, Rejection, hunger and war, So that you may reach out your hand To comfort them and To turn their pain to joy And may God bless you With enough foolishness To believe that you can Make a difference in the world, So that you can do What others claim cannot be done To bring justice and kindness To all our children and the poor.
Amen - Sent in by Wilma Tindall