Christmas 2020 will be unlike Christmas in any year of our lifetime. Day to day life throughout much of this year has been disrupted, our regular rhythms and patterns of activity have been denied us, and so many of the plans for the year have been shaken up. Even the simplicity of sharing time together as family and friends has been curtailed, and we feel deeply the sense of isolation and separation.
Yes, there have been good things too. Connections with neighbours have been made, and community has been found in new ways (including WRBC now online together). The tonic of the natural world has been a real blessing even in autumn, but think back to how lockdown in the spring offered us time and space to pause and to listen with wonder and delight. We have also taken time to reflect on Wellbeing as a dimension of church life, and to consider what it means to Pray.
But the overriding theme this year is a sense of loss. The dominant note in so many peoples’ lives has been the pain of bereavement be that because of covid-19 or for other reasons. There’s a sadness in our hearts as we feel a nation’s loss, and as we feel something of the global impact of the pandemic alongside the enduring issues of climate change, poverty and injustice.
Christmas is a season of light, as we celebrate the coming of the light, Jesus. And yet sometimes we need to tune ourselves in directly and intentionally to the comfort and joy that is ours. And so we are offering you to join us online for an event called Finding Light in the Deepest Dark.
Perhaps you are grieving, perhaps you are tired, perhaps you are anxious, perhaps you are lonely – this has been a hard year, and even with the prospect of vaccines approved and rolling out, there’s still a long way to go. But let’s offer one another the opportunity to meet, to offer some lament (ie firstly to acknowledge the darkness), but then to bring our shadows and gloom before God, to allow his presence to illuminate our hearts and lives afresh this Christmas.
Please join us on Wednesday 16th December on Zoom as we look together for the inextinguishable light that is ours in Jesus, born in Bethlehem long ago, but born in us too by faith.
