Advent Hope

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Isaiah, Liturgical Seasons, Religion

I feel as if I am still in the week of Advent I rather than Advent IV.  There has been a lot of sorrow, anxiety and anger around.  Death is being hard to those who are left to grieve and to those whose are being called home.  Jesus didn’t come into a clean tidy world so why should the time when we prepare to celebrate his birth be any different?  That’s what I keep telling myself, but even after a wedding on Saturday, two Crib services (included one with a splendid new crib), a Nativity play and Service of lessons and carols by candlelight on Sunday, Monday has been a day deep deep in Advent.

How I long for the daylight of Christmas chase away the darkness of Advent and bring comfort and peace to those for whom sorrow or waiting is making the darkness seem unending, oh how much this prophesy is needed this year, come Lord Jesus:

The Spirit of the Sovereign LORD is on me, because the LORD has anointed me to proclaim good news to the poor.  He has sent me to bind up the brokenhearted, to proclaim freedom for the captives and release from darkness for the prisoners, to proclaim the year of the LORD’s favor and the day of vengeance of our God, to comfort all who mourn, and provide for those who grieve in Zion— to bestow on them a crown of beauty instead of ashes, the oil of joy instead of mourning, and a garment of praise instead of a spirit of despair.  They will be called oaks of righteousness, a planting of the LORD for the display of his splendour.

Isaiah 61:1-3

Advent Blogs

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Liturgical Seasons

In response to a request here are links to

Advent Jottings

Love Blooms Bright

They will stay as the first post on this blog during Advent, any other blogs will appear below.

Break in the Silence

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Liturgical Seasons

Things have been very quiet on the blog front for a while a combination of being very busy while not having the inclination to blog.

However …

One of the things that has been keeping me busy is our Action Outreach Group at All Saints and as part of that outreach, both to congregational members and to those wider, it was decided that an Advent blog would be given a try this year.  So over at Advent Jottings you will find a post every day during Advent and on a few occasions before Advent actually begins.  Also I understand that Kimberly has found enough volunteers to have love blooming brightly again this Advent, so you can also pop over to Love Blooms Bright to see other thoughts etc during the Advent season.

Maybe the discipline of doing this, others will be contributing, will mean that when the year ticks over to 2011 this blog will once more become more active.

Silver Lining

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Advent

Three Eucharists each Sunday means my new Rose Vestments will get six outings a year!

Advent Calendar – Rowan Williams

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Advent

He will come like last leaf’s fall.
One night when the November wind
has flayed the trees to bone, and earth
wakes choking on the mould,
the soft shroud’s folding.

He will come like frost.
One morning when the shrinking earth
opens on mist, to find itself
arrested in the net
of alien, sword-set beauty.

He will come like dark.
One evening when the bursting red
December sun draws up the sheet
and penny-masks its eye to yield
the star-snowed fields of sky.

He will come, will come,
will come like crying in the night,
like blood, like breaking,
as the earth writhes to toss him free.
He will come like child.

Pathways

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Advent

Sometimes our paths meander

like water returning to the sea as the tide retreats.

Sometimes however they join together making a wider,

straighter,

deeper path.

A path which draws others in like streams converging into a river.

A path were the journey is shared, shared in its joys and in its sorrows.

And in that sharing of a journey, the travelling can seem lighter as we are encouraged by each other.

Helping each other around the boulders of this life;

the things that try and alter our course.

Not swept along by the tide, but rather;

carrying others when their journey is rough,

and letting others uphold us when the storms rage about us.

Prepare

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Advent

Prepare that is the cry.

Prepare not the turkey, the presents, the cards.

Rather prepare our hearts and our lives.

Prepare them not just for one day,

but for a lifetime.

Prepare them not just for this life,

but for a life that we anticipate will come to us one day.

Prepare the way, the way for Christ to enter our lives, to abide with us, to been seen by others through our words and actions, so that He may also enter their lives and know the joy and peace He can bring, not just on Christmas Day but on each and every day of their lives.

St Nicholas

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Liturgical Seasons, Saints

Today is St Nicholas’ day, the day when many children in mainland Europe receive gifts.  St Nicholas was a bishop in Turkey and the story goes that he would leave coins in the shoes of people who were poor, in particular there is a story told about him involving 3 sisters.  They came from a poor family and both their father and St Nicholas were concerned that they wouldn’t be able to marry as they had no dowry, so he secretly gave three purses of gold, one for each daughter.  Some versions of this story say that he dropped them down the chimney so that they would be seen as a gift from God and they landed in the girls stockings that were drying by the fire!  From him developed the idea of Santa Claus and is the reason that Santa Claus is sometimes referred to as Old Nick.

St Nicholas is the patron saint of sailors and pawn pawnbrokers the three golden balls that traditionally hang outside their shops representing the three purses of gold.  Slightly ironic I feel that someone who gave to the poor ends up being the patron saint of people who make money from the less fortunate!

Today we can remember his generous spirit and while Christmas is still a way off maybe we should all take time out today to give a gift to someone else in need.  Be it donating money to a charity, giving tinned food to those who help the homeless, volunteering to do some charity work or anonymously putting some money in an envelope and posting it through the door of someone who we know will be struggling this Christmas.

Advent 1995 – John Betjeman

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Advent

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It’s dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out ‘Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.’
 
And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They’d sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.
 
We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell’d go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
‘The time draws near the birth of Christ’.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

Just Words?

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Advent