Advent Four: Happy Christmas

 

Thought for the Day: Radio Christmas: Christmas Eve 2023

Good Morning.

I’m delighted to be at Radio Christmas on Christmas Eve and offer this Thought for the Day on this, the final day of broadcasting for 2023.

On that first Christmas night, which we celebrate today, another form of broadcasting echoed from the skies above Bethlehem as the angels sang the message Glory to God in highest heaven and peace to all on earth.

Ancient words that never grow old – with our prayers for peace in the world central to all our liturgies tonight and tomorrow.

Just like that angelic choir, Radio Christmas has, since the 1st of December this year, been singing God’s praise, broadcasting a message of hope and goodwill.

And for us at Amersham Free Church, it’s been a real privilege to have their studio in our tower room.

Yet, the singing and music of Christmas is just half the story.  For at its centre is the idea that God, in Jesus, came among us and shared life with us.

The funds raised through this year’s Radio Christmas will be used wisely and lovingly in the ongoing ministry of Street Kids Direct in Central America.

Duncan and his colleagues really do live out their faith alongside the young people Street Kids tries to help.  This is love incarnate – a down to earth love with practical compassion, and all of it is a wonderful reflection of God’s down to earth love for us in the gifting to our world that first Christmas night of the Christ Child.

Christmas – a time to sing God’s praise, a moment to share God’s love, in fact it’s a way of life for every day of the year – and thank you Radio Christmas for reminding us of that during these 24 days of inspiring broadcasting.

So, Come, let us adore Him, Christ the Lord.

May God’s blessing and joy be yours this day.

Happy Christmas!

Blog holiday nest week

Advent 3: You're in the right place!

 

You might have noticed that I never miss an opportunity to ‘dine out’ on an experience that comes my way.

Well, on Monday of this week I had some emergency eye surgery for a retinal tear. The day started with a 9.30am appointment at Stoke Mandeville but after countless people had looked into my right eye saying phrases like: ‘Oh, I see’, or ‘Well, it’s a bit bigger than we expected’! I was sent off to the John Radcliffe Hospital in Oxford and by 1pm I arrived.

Actually, I got there quicker than my notes, so for a while I was something of an enigma to them.  Having been sent to the walk in eye clinic I found myself in a waiting room bustling with over a hundred patients all being triaged.

I was so taken by the helpful and encouraging receptionist who clearly saw my anxiety that having spent all morning at Stoke Mandeville I might have to start the process all over again at the John Radcliffe.  He words resonated with calm assurance when she said: Don’t worry, you are in the right place…

Sure enough, 30 mins later she found me out, said all the notes had now come through and I was whisked upstairs.  By 5pm I was having surgery and having been picked up by our youngest son, Jonty, was home by 7pm.  I can’t see through the eye yet, it has a gas bubble in it now, but the hope is that in a month or two things will be back to normal.

I received such wonderful and skilled treatment on Monday at both hospitals, and I’m truly thankful.  I’m also very grateful to that receptionist who reassured me that I was in the right place.

What is, I wonder, the right place for us? 

It's difficult to answer such a question at times and maybe we often want to be somewhere else.  Days of bereavement or health issues are not easy places to be.

My right place was only made possible because at that moment when I was very vulnerable, I found myself surrounded by people who cared.

Our right places might have moments of essential solitude, yet often these are so helpfully balanced by other moments when life is tempered by being in community and walking with others in companionship.

So…bringing it back to the stories of Advent and Christmas…I wonder if those shepherds scratched their heads as they arrived at the manger wondering Is this really the right place for us?  Although the gospels don’t say it, we get the impression that something of The Spirit stirred in their hearts as they knelt before the Christ child reassuring them that this was absolutely the right place to be that special night.

Advent Two: Light from the tower

 

It was a great joy to present a show on Radio Christmas this week.  I was well looked after by the production crew and had just a small insight on how hard everyone is working on this year’s project.

Radio Christmas is broadcasting from 1^st to 24^th December, and this year it is from our Tower Room at Amersham Free Church. It’s been a real joy to have Duncan and his team around the place this month and we do hope the station will raise valuable funds for the ongoing work of Street Kids Direct, working in Central America.

Churches have traditionally been built with spiers and towers as a way of, architecturally speaking, pointing to God.  AFC has just a small tower, built in the somewhat austere architecture of the early 1960s.  On its top storey is a boiler room, the one below has, at various times, been used as a Youth ‘Den’ and more recently as a storeroom.  So, how wonderful that during these days of December it has become a vibrant and bustling centre of activity, set up with all the latest technology, enabling a radio station with a Christian foundation, to broadcast.

And all of that seems to me to be wonderfully appropriate.  On the outside I’m always pleased to see out tower has a large cross on it.  Now, on the inside, through Radio Christmas, it is broadcasting the love and light we all need to tune into at this time of year. Enter the studio on any day of the week and you’ll hear laughter, prayerful concern, supportive conversation, and uplifting music.  Indeed, something of God’s love and light is pulsating everyday this Advent from the tower of Amersham Free Church!