This morning we’d like to share a Christmas message from the Reverend Andy Day, Superintendent Minister with the Liskeard and Looe Methodist Circuit

Friends,

Its Christmas!

And I do wish you a merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!

Yet even as I write the words, I am aware that for some of us, it is unusually hard to believe that Christmas shall be merry or that the new year may bring us any happiness.

I admit, that when I say it, I am as powerless to influence either of these as anyone else. However, I do believe that each is possible, precisely because I believe in someone greater than myself who has the power to influence our everyday lives - the Christ child in the manger - whose birth we celebrate even now.

Many of us will be familiar with the journey to Bethlehem that Mary and Joseph took. A journey that they undertook because God has spoken to them and chosen them for his purposes.

It was a journey that was hundreds of years in the planning, but I marvel at how perfectly it was planned - from the clues that each prophet was given to share, to the angels proclaiming the good news to the shepherds out washing their socks by night!

And this year I am holding on dearly to my belief that Jesus’ coming among us, was God keeping his promises to us, promises to bless us, not to harm us, plans to give us hope and a future (Jer 29 v11).

Though, that night must have seemed as strange to the people around Bethlehem then, as it does to us today that there were angels nearby, rowdy shepherds pouring through the streets, and blokes on camels from far far away somewhere over the horizon all converging on a lean-to in someone’s back yard. It was strange indeed that after a silence of hundreds of years, God had suddenly shown up to intervene (at long last!).

And that is where I believe we may be once again, in the midst of God’s silence, awaiting his intervention once again. There are inklings, glimmers of God’s good behind every mask worn today, filling every social distance, yet I yearn for that moment where I see God move in power to rescue us from Covid and from all our ills.

Christmas is therefore a reminder to me that as one hymn says ‘God is working his purpose out, as year succeeds to year’ and why I say again, I wish you a merry Christmas and a happy new year,

Kindest Regards,

Rev Andy Day

Superintendent Minister Liskeard &Looe Methodist Circuit.