Christmas Message for St Andrew's Rugby

We can never know where God will take us in our lives and this season of Advent as we have been adjusting to living in Rugby, I have been reflecting upon the nature of the Christian journey. Within our Christian journey we all experience both familiarity and difference. New places make us aware of how particular and individual life and experience is; they make us aware of what we have grown familiar with. At the same time they confront us with the transitory nature of all our experience and with the limits of our experience so far.

Life’s journey at points can be very testing: experiences of loss or of illness both mental and physical can bring us to points of crisis. We may have limited ability to relate to others, we may lose any real sense of personal identity. At these times we rely on others to be our stability and memory and most importantly of all we rely on the church to tell the story of God’s continuing presence with us. The church has a duty to be that which, whether ignored or forgotten, keeps telling the good news. People deep down are hungry for and desperate to receive that good news and we have to keep trying to find a way of enabling them to hear it.

Like God’s presence with us, his abiding and eternal presence, we must never give up on our Christian vocation – which more than ever at Christmas is about hoping. My hope for us as we explore the eternal nature of God together in our very particular context here is that we learn to grow together as people who can explore, adapt and be transformed because we trust in God who has already written the story of our identities and knows the end of all our journeying and imagining. In that confidence and in that faith I believe we will make strides of discovery about the love to be found in communities where God really dwells.

May God bless you, those that you love and those you pray for, this Christmas.

Peace in Christ +

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