Stainglass window
Christmas 2011
3rd Dec Advent Party
12th Dec @ 2pm
Carol Service at Oak tree Court
16th Dec @ 2.30pm
Carol Service at Stratford Court
17th Dec @11am
Carol Singing outside Co-Op
18th Dec Nativity and Christingle Service and Carol Service
24th Dec @ 11pm (Service starts at 11.30pm
United Service at URC Etwall Rd
25th Dec @10am
Christmas Day Service
"There Is a time for everything"
Dear Friends,
As both Sharron and I celebrate our birthdays this month (by the time you read this Sharron will have had hers, mine's probably still to come!), the theme of the passing of time often fills my mind at this time of the year.
Time exercises a curious hold over us. What exactly is it? It's surrounded by all sorts of myths. "Time heals," we say, knowing that sometimes it doesn't do anything of the sort. "We've got all the time in the world", boast some; while others "haven't got the time". we can be behind times, or have time on our hands. Like money we can spend it anyway we want, but we can only spend it once. It never comes back again, even though we sometimes wish it would.
Nothing is more even-handed than time. George Bush and Tony Blair (or should it be Gordon Brown now?) have no more time than you or I. The busy industrialist has no more time than the drifter, the creative artist no more time than the dropout. All have exactly the same amount of time in a day.
The Old Testament book of Eccleastastes has within it (Chaptre 3) that famous meditation on time, inviting us to meditate upon it, and to use it to the full.
Thank God for variety! If life were unchanging think how much more monotonous it would be. We may think we would like to live in a perpetual summer, but in reality we are glad of the changing seasons. Each of them has its own special attractions, its distinctive colours, smells and atmosphere.
And the writer of the Old Testament poem invites us to take God into account as we think about time. From where we are we may not always be able to understand what is happening to us. As the writer Soren Kierkegaard put it "Life has to be lived forwards; the trouble is that we can only understand it backwards". There are times when we cry out in real desperation, "Why has this happened to me?" We accuse God, perhaps, of messing up our plans, and of dashing our hopes. But then, when we've lived life forwards, we stand and look back and see there was sense in it after all.
That sense is possible because we are not the playthings of some impersonal fate, but the creatures of a loving creator whom we can know as "Father". In the end, it's all a matter of perspective. You can stand and view time from the perspective of the sceptic and unbeliever. Then life so often seems nothing more than "doing time". Or you can stand with those who can't explain it, but who have faith. The time is coupled with the perspective of eternity. And instead of the complaints and grumbles, there will be the quiet affirmation that God remembers all our deeds and gives them significance, and that we are very special to him. If the latter is our perspective on time, then life is not a burden, but a blessing under the care of a loving and generous heavenly Father
‘
Your friend and pastor,
Jonathan Calvert