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Previous Editions - October 2008, November 2008
December 2008
Services in December
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Dec 7th |
8:00am |
Holy Communion |
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10:00am |
Family Toy Service |
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Dec 14th |
10:00am |
Holy Communion with Junior Church |
|
10:30am |
St@PH (Word & Worship at Park Hill School) |
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6:00pm |
Carol Service |
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Dec 21st |
10:00am |
Holy Communion with Junior Church |
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Dec 24th |
3:00pm | Crib Service at St Andrew's |
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4:30pm |
Crib Service at Park Hill School |
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11:00pm |
Midnight Communion |
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Dec 25th |
10:00am |
Said Communion |
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Dec 28th |
10:00am |
Holy Communion |
Holy Communion on Wednesdays at 10am followed by coffee, including Christmas Eve. No service on New Year’s Eve.
Dear Friends
There’s a new series on the television at the moment that one or two of you may have caught, entitled “Fringe”. My son persuaded me to watch a couple of episodes, but I decided I couldn’t be doing with it. It is an American drama in which the nation is under threat from mysterious enemies and purports to explore the wilder end of science. Now I do know that many of the things we take for granted today (microwaves, mobile phones, the internet) were pure science fiction fifty years ago, but I do like a certain amount of logic to my fantasies. The idea that the writer of the drama solves whatever problem the heroes face with a bit of made up science (e.g. reading the brain waves of a corpse for up to six hours after they’ve died to discover who murdered them) is all too convenient. I guess I feel the same way about a murder mystery that just doesn’t add up.
I imagine some people feel the same way about the Christmas story. Isn’t it all just a little bit too convenient? A tiny baby that everyone loves and wants to hold, but who is at the same time the son of God!? A child born to a teenage girl who is still a virgin? A baby, the most vulnerable of created things, who is also the Prince of Peace? Isn’t it all the stuff of television script writers with one eye on a mass audience and with little time for meaningful plausibility? Maybe so, but our doubts and questions about this have a precedent. Unlike a character in ‘Fringe’ who has her brain wired up to that of a colleague who is in a coma and is then drugged and submerged in a bath so that she can be linked to his retinal memory (I may have some of the details confused) and asks no questions of the mad scientist who proposes all this, the Virgin Mary has some questions. “How can this be?” she demands of the Angel Gabriel.
In many ways, this is the same question, doubters have been asking ever since. A virgin pregnant? It defies the laws of biology and has been attributed to invention by the gospel writers. But the angel’s answer remains as relevant as ever. ‘Nothing is impossible for God’. He achieves so many wondrous things through the Christmas story. Children around the world are transfixed by a story 2,000 years old. Adults come to worship in this country in far greater number than any other time of the year. The spirit of peace is proclaimed amidst the turmoil of our nation. The greatest wonder however is that of God in human form, living a human life. It’s a story that never fails to enthrall me however many times I hear it.
Every blessing for Christmas
Greg Smith
Christmas Father
Working with wood
And loving Mary,
My plans for the future were simple.
They included
Nothing of dreams and angels,
Nothing of danger and wise men
Bringing gifts for a child
Who was not in my plan,
Yet who himself was a gift.
Not mine, yet uniquely mine, by grace.
Mine to accept, to protect,
Mine to nurture, to cherish,
Mine to teach - and to learn from -
All that can be accomplished with wood
And love.
Daphne Kitching