|
From the Minister’s Study
It is more blessed to give than to receive
(Acts
20:35)
The mention of
the word ‘Christmas’ brings to our minds: White-robed angels and a pudding
full of currants; celestial music and a red-coated gentleman with a huge
white beard; a luminous sky full of stars and a box of snappy crackers with
paper hats; a spangled tree; a snowy scene, a choir of boys - scrubbed,
shampooed and beautifully behaved, melodious songs from ‘Jingle Bells’
through to the ‘Hallelujah Chorus.’ All these speak of a God involved in His
creation, born among us, living within us and of humanity failing to find
words to express its joyous wonder, surrounded with images of purity and
sounds of jollity to express the inexpressible, the all-giving love of God.
An
African boy listened to the teacher explaining why it is that Christians give
presents to each other on Christmas Day. When Christmas Day came, the boy
brought the teacher a sea shell of lustrous beauty. That type of shell could
only be found at a certain bay several miles away. Realising how far the boy
had to walk, the teacher exclaimed: ‘but you shouldn't have gone all that way
to get a gift for me.’ The boy answered, ‘Long walk part of the gift.’
As
we reflect on Christmas and what it means, I am sure giving and receiving
gifts is part of the definition. On balance, however, Christmas seems to have
more to do with giving than receiving, ‘for God so loved the world that He
gave His only begotten Son.’ Intrinsic to the very first Christmas, God
demonstrated what it means to mankind by giving His best, His only Son which,
in Trinitarian terms, means He gave Himself to the world. Therefore, rather
than focusing on what gifts we want for Christmas, perhaps we should
concentrate on what gifts to give.
C.
R. Angells, tells of his friend Paul who had received a brand new motorcar
from his brother as a pre-Christmas present. On Christmas Eve, when Paul came
out of his office, a street boy was walking around the shiny new car,
admiring it. ‘Is this your car, mister?’, the boy asked. Paul nodded, ‘Yes,
my brother gave it to me for Christmas.’ The boy looked astounded. ‘You mean your
brother gave it to you, and it cost you nothing? Boy, I wish . . .’ He
hesitated, and Paul guessed that he was going to wish that he had a brother
like that. Paul was wrong, because what the lad said made Paul completely
flabbergasted. ‘I wish . . .’ the boy went on, ‘that I could be a
brother like that.’ The boy requested, ‘Mister, would you mind driving in
front of my house?’ Smiling a little, he thought, the lad wanted to show his
neighbours that he rode in a new car.
But
Paul was wrong again. On arriving home, the boy stepped into the house and
came out carrying his little polio-crippled brother. The lad sort of squeezed
him up and pointing to the car said, ‘His brother gave it to him for
Christmas, and it didn’t cost him a penny. And someday I’m gonna’ give you
one just like it. then you can see for yourself all the pretty things in
Christmas windows that I've been trying to tell you about.’
I
wish I could be a brother like that!’’ What a grand thought from a street
urchin! Christmas celebrates Jesus’ birthday, when God demonstrated His love
by giving His best. May we emulate His example and give Him our best: our
love (hearts), our lives (mind and soul)¾ our All (our
possessions). May we be pre-occupied with what to give to God this Christmas
rather than on what to receive. ‘You should remember the words of the Lord
Jesus: ‘It is more blessed to give than to receive.’
Merry Christmas to you and your loved ones
Daniel
Heaven can wait
A man
was trying to understand the nature of God, and asked him: ‘God, how long is
a million years to you?’
God
answered: ‘A million years is like a minute.’
Then
the man asked: "God, how much is a million pounds to you?’
And
God replied: ‘A million pounds is like a penny.’
Finally
the man asked: ‘God, could you give me a penny?’
And
God said, ‘In a minute.’
Christmas Day
The word Christmas
comes from Old English Cristes maesse, meaning ‘Christ’s mass’. The
word ‘mass’ in the name tells us that it was regarded as a religious
festival. The culmination of the Church’s worship and thanksgiving was a
communion service; as Britain was a part of the Roman Catholic Church until
the Reformation, Communion was called ‘mass.’ Christmas was said to be a
‘high day’ because a high mass was celebrated. Another example is Michaelmas,
on which the archangel Michael was also celebrated with a mass.
But for most of the
common people this communion service was not the high point of the day.
Advent was always observed as a time of preparation and therefore penance,
which would have included fasting. Most people worked the land, and ate
poorly in December anyway because it was winter, when less work was available
(so there was less money) but also because there was less to eat. We see how
the arrival of Christmas Day was doubly welcome as it ended the time of
penance and, being a ‘high day,’ culminated with a banquet. It was commonly
called a ‘feast,’ and took a form similar to our ‘faith lunches,’ with
everyone contributing something. Christmas is still traditionally called a
‘feast day,’ in the liturgy of many Churches.
According to early
Roman sources, Christmas was celebrated in Rome as a Christian festival by
336 AD. In the eastern parts of the Roman Empire, however, the main festival
and feast day of the Christian year was Epiphany which was celebrated on 6
January, and commemorated the coming of the wise men. Only later were
Christmas, Pentecost and Easter thought to be more important.
The butterfly
A man found the
cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. The man sat and
watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body
through the little hole. Then it seemed to stop making progress. It appeared
as if it had got as far as it could, and it could go no further.
So the man decided to
help the butterfly. He took a pair of scissors and snipped away the remaining
bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen
body and small, shriveled wings.
The man continued to
watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would
enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in
time.
Neither happened! In
fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen
body and shriveled wings. It never flew.
What the man in his
kindness did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle
required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of
forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would
be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.
Struggles may be
painful, but they aren’t always a bad thing. Sometimes they are exactly what
we need. If God allowed us to go through our lives without any obstacles, we
would end up weak and useless. We might feel ‘happy’ but we would probably
never fly.
I asked for strength . . .
And God gave me difficulties to make me strong.
I asked for wisdom . . .
And God gave me problems to solve.
I asked for prosperity . . .
And God gave me brain and brawn to work.
I asked for courage . . .
And God gave me danger to overcome.
I asked for love . . .
And God gave me troubled people to help.
I asked for favours . . .
And God gave me opportunities.
I received nothing I wanted
I received everything I needed
Peace
Deep peace, pure
white of the moon to you.
Deep peace, pure green of the grass to you.
Deep peace, pure brown of the earth to you.
Deep peace, pure grey of the dew to you.
Deep peace, pure blue of the sky to you.
Deep peace of the running water to you.
Deep peace of the flowing air to you.
Deep peace of the quiet earth to you.
Deep peace of the shining stars to you.
Deep peace of the Son of Peace to you.
Fiona Macleod
(1855–1905)
Coffee
Is not this the
kind of fasting I have chosen: to loose the chains
of injustice and to untie the cords of the yoke? (Isaiah 58:6)
If you start your day with a cup of
coffee, you will have noticed how expensive coffee is getting. Prices in
trendy cafes like Starbucks have reached record highs.
Simple
economic theory teaches that if demand for a product increases, then prices
will follow. What you might not know is that coffee producers have seen their
income fall dramatically in the past few years.
This
year prices paid for raw coffee beans have fallen to their lowest level since
the great depression of the 1930s. Prices of other primary commodities
(meaning agricultural raw materials and minerals) have also fallen
dramatically. Developing countries are the hardest hit because these
commodities are their major source of income, for example, the Windward
Islands in the West Indies are heavily dependent on the export of bananas and
sugar, and many African economies rely on income from tea, coffee, sugar and
cocoa beans. The falling prices force these countries into a poverty spiral: the loss of export income means they cannot repay
their debts, so the amount of compound interest goes up and then they have to
sell more to meet their debt repayments.
But
not everyone in the commodity trade is losing out. For multinational
companies, falling prices mean increasing gains. They buy the raw materials
ever more cheaply and then charge their own customers more and more for the
finished product. Nestlé, the world’s largest coffee roaster, enjoyed a 20%
growth in profits this year, partly due to ‘favourable commodity prices.’
New
agreements on world trade are making the situation worse. Many rich
countries, including Britain, maintain tariffs on imports from developing
countries ¾ especially on processed commodities. So, for example, an
African country wanting to process and package its own coffee in order to
provide more jobs and more profits at home, would find it easy could sell raw
coffee beans for processing in the West, but big barriers (in the form of
tariffs) would be erected if they try to export processed coffee. So
the African country’s economy would receive only the price of the beans while
the profits from processing and packaging would stay in the West. It gets
worse. While maintaining tariffs on imports from developing countries, the
multi-national companies are negotiating for trade barriers to be removed when
they want to sell their own products to these countries. So a developing
country that tried to keep out cheap imports in order to support its own home
market would find that World Trade rules prevented this. Their home market
could be flooded by cheap imports from abroad and their government would not
legally be able to do anything about it
Case history
Rubarema Selestino is a coffee farmer in
Uganda. He farms three acres of land and supports 16 people. ‘The coffee
traders say that the price of coffee depends on the world market, but the
shopkeepers say that the price of their merchandise is fixed,’ he says.
‘Liberalisation has brought unscrupulous traders and is driving farmers like
me into abject poverty.’
Widow
Hope Ndaboneka says, ‘There has been a drastic fall of income on my sweet
potatoes, coffee, bananas and beans. Our poverty is getting worse. I mobilise
other coffee growers to build our co-operative. That’s all I can do.’
So what can we
do?
1 PRAY
for a fairer world. Isaiah 58: 6–10 could form the basis for your
meditations.
2 BUY
Fairly Traded coffee. The Fair Trade mark guarantees that the coffee
producers receive a guaranteed fair price for their coffee, even if the world
market price falls below that level. The guaranteed income enables them to
plan for the future and to set aside profits for health care, education and
community development. The Co-op in Littleborough, Morrison’s and most other major supermarkets now sell Café direct, Tea direct, Clipper Teas, etc.
3. SIGN
a Christian Aid "Trade for Life" pledge, to persuade our Government
to call for fairer trade rules.
Pledge cards available in all the churches
in the Circuit or from Jo Monk - phone 374614.
Did You Know: Christmas is…
C is for carol
- a song of joy. Nowadays, we associate carols with Christmas, but until
about a century ago, a ‘carol’ was a song to be sung at Easter, to celebrate
the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.
H is for holly
– Why do we have holly at Christmas? It’s thought to represent faithfulness
and eternal life because it’s evergreen, and the red berries are often said
to symbolise Christ’s blood, shed for us on the Cross.
R is for rejoicing:
most of us do a lot of this at Christmas! And so we should: Jesus was born to
save us and reconcile us to God. But the Puritans (a group of strict
Protestants led by Oliver Cromwell, Protector of England 1653–9) didn’t
approve of rejoicing at all. Feasting, dancing, and merrymaking were banned,
even at Christmas. In 1644, Christmas was even kept as a fast! Aren’t you glad
the Methodist Conference doesn’t take the same view?
I is for Immanuel-
the name given to Christ as the deliverer of Judah prophesied by Isaiah
(Isa. 7:14; 8:8, Matthew 1:23). In Hebrew, it means ‘God with us’, the
central message of this Christmas season.
S is for Santa
Claus, a popular folkloric version of Saint Nicholas. St Nicholas wasn’t
a merry little fat man in a red fur coat, but a 4th century bishop, who is
venerated as the patron saint of children. The name ‘Santa Claus’ comes from
the Dutch dialect form of his name ‘Sinte Klaas’.
T is for tree¾ Christmas trees, like holly, are evergreen
and such trees were used for thousands of years as symbols of eternal life in
Egypt and China as well as the Middle East. Tree worship was common among
pagan Europeans and survived until the 7th century in Britain, when the Church stamped it out. The modern use
of Christmas trees to decorate the house started in the 1840s, when Queen
Victoria’s husband, Albert, imported the custom from his German home.
M is for Mary,
the mother of Jesus. We all owe Mary a lot: it was her ‘Yes’ to God’s plan
that opened the way for Jesus to be born. And it caused her much pain as well
as great joy: saying ‘Yes’ to God often does. She was exposed to social
stigma when she became pregnant before marriage (look at Joseph’s initial
reaction, Matthew 1: 19) and 33 years later she was to see her son die an
agonising death on the Cross. But then there came the Resurrection . . . When
we say ‘Yes’ to God, the suffering never has the last word, because God is
Love, and He will always triumph in the end.
A is for Advent,
which means ‘coming’ and refers to the four weeks leading up to Christmas. In
the Christian Church, there are two aspects to Advent: it’s a period of preparation
for Christmas (the First Coming of Jesus), but also a time of preparation for
the Second Coming of Jesus, when he will come in glory to set up his kingdom,
judge his enemies and reward the faithful, both living and dead. Nowadays,
Advent tends to get swallowed up in early Christmas celebrations, but it is
traditionally a time of spiritual preparation, which includes repentance and
fasting, as well as joy.
S is for shepherds:
the first people to hear that Christ was born. Isn’t it significant that God
chose a group of poor and humble men to be the first to hear that the Messiah
had come? And that’s what Christmas is all about: a Virgin has a child, a
group of humble shepherds are visited by a host of heavenly angels and
Almighty God, the Creator of the Universe, becomes a tiny, helpless baby. The
world’s way of doing things is turned upside down. The whole of Jesus’ life
was like that. As St Paul says, the message of the Cross is foolishness in
the eyes of the world, ‘but to us who are being saved it is the power of God’
(1 Cor. 1:18).
Let’s celebrate that glorious, loving
Power today!
Send a Message of Hope
A
couple of months ago, we had an article in Salt and Light about
SHAGILDY ATAKOV, a Baptist Christian from Turkmenistan, who is in prison because
of his faith. He is serving a 4-year prison sentence in a labour camp and has
been fined the equivalent of US$12,000, for alleged fraud. But Amnesty
International and members of his church believe the real reason is his
religious belief.
He
was arrested in December 1998, beaten systematically and given drugs to alter
his mind. By February 2001 he was so ill that Amnesty International
feared for his life. In response to international pressure (including people
like us writing to the Turkmen authorities), he was taken to hospital and
given medical treatment. He is still in prison.
State
officials continue to harass his family on religious grounds, placing them
under ‘village arrest,’ giving one of his brothers a short term of
administrative detention and forcing other relatives out of their jobs.
So, this
Christmas, please send a message of hope to Shagildy Atakov in prison.
He may not be allowed to receive it, but the authorities will have to take
notice if a huge sack of mail arrives for him: they will know that the
international community is watching and that they cannot ill-treat him with
impunity. And if your card does get through to him, imagine the hope it will
give him. A lady I knew who had been writing letters for Amnesty for many
years, once received a reply from a prisoner. It said simply: ‘Your card was
like light coming in through the prison bars’. I think that’s more than worth
a card and a 45p stamp!
Please send a card to:
Turkmenistan,
745000 g. Turkmenbashi,
Balkansky Velayat,
Department Policii Balkanskogo Velayata,
Zaklyuchennomu,
Atakovu, Shagildy,
TURKMENISTAN
Please do
not use Amnesty International Christmas cards or mention Amnesty’s name
in your card.
A
simple message of goodwill is enough¾ please don’t
express any political opinions or discuss politics at all. And afterwards,
please put your name and address on the card and, if you receive a reply,
please send a copy to Amnesty International, 99–119 Rosebery Avenue,
London EC1R 4RE.
(Your card will need a 45p stamp and an
airmail sticker).
If you would
like to send a card to other prisoners of conscience this Christmas, please
contact Jo Monk for details, on 374614.
Three boys . . .
Three boys in a
school playground were bragging about their fathers.
The
first boy said, ‘My father scribbles a few words on a piece of paper, calls
it a poem, and gets £50.’
The
second boy said, ‘That’s nothing. My father scribbles a few words on a piece
of paper, calls it a song, and is given £100.’
Not
to be outdone, little Johnny said, ‘My Dad scribbles a few words on a piece
of paper, calls it a sermon . . . and it takes eight people to collect all
the money!’
The Post-modernist’s 23rd Psalm
(or ‘Political correctness gone mad’)
The LORD and I are in a shepherd/sheep situation,
and I am in a position of negative need.
He prostrates me in a Greenbelt grazing area,
and directs me to parallel non¾ torrential
aqueous liquid.
He moves me into a positive behavioural format
for the maximum prestige of His identity.
Notwithstanding the fact that I make ambulatory
progress through the inter-hill mortality slot,
terror sensations will not be sustained in me due
to paranormal phenomena.
Your pastoral walking aid and quadruped pick-up unit induce in me a
pleasurific mood-state.
You design and produce a nutrient bearing furniture-type structure in
the
context of non-cooperative elements.
You act out a head related folk ritual involving vegetable extract and
my
beverage utensil experiences a volume crisis.
It is an on-going fact that your inter-relational, empathetical and
non-vengeance capabilities will remain with me as their target focus for the
duration of my non-death period;
and I will possess tenant rights in the housing association of the
LORD on a permanently open-ended time basis.
Notes· Quotes
·Anecdotes
Jesus came:–
That we might have life
and have it more
abundantly
Jesus said:–
I will come again and
receive you unto myself
that where I am, you
may be also. (John 14:2,3)
C is the Christ child. Jesus His name
H is heaven¾ from whence He came
R the radiance of the star that led the way
I the inn¾ in its stable He lay
S for the shepherds out on the hill
T for the tidings of joy and goodwill
M the Magi¾ a king they sought
A the Angels¾ Heavenly music they brought
S Salvation:
a gift for all on earth
This
spells Christmas- when we celebrate his birth
Cameo Character Corner
E L I Z A BE T H . . .
Wife of Zacharias the priest (Luke 1:5)
Was promised by God (in old age) a son
to
be called John (Luke 1:13)
Opened her home to Mary for 3 months (Luke
1:15)
Bore a child filled with the Holy Spirit
(Luke 1:15)
Insisted on a God-given name of
John against
tradition,
family and friends (Luke 1:60)
Her son was John the Baptist who prepared
the
people for the ministry of Jesus (Matthew 3:11) Florence
How do you
make holy water?
Boil the hell out of it!
Dearnley Greenhill Smallbridge
Smithy Bridge Wardle
|
