PASTORAL MESSAGE

Pastoral Message for November
from Steve Judd (Trinity Church Elder)

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Another summer has passed away.  The hot, dry weather is a fading memory and the Autumn rain and gales have arrived.  Cricket and the other pleasures of Summer are finished for another year and most of the flowers in the garden are now over.

Another year of worship at church is also drawing to a close.  Our thoughts will turn to the end of things and Christ coming in glory before we start again with another Advent season.

The original Advent was a promise of a new beginning.  “Advent” means “Coming”, and Advent is a time of preparing for the festival of Christmas, as Lent is a time of preparation for Easter.

At the darkest time of year, we are reminded of the hope of this new beginning with God.  Perhaps not so much hope as promise, as the coming of Christ was prophesied in the Scriptures many centuries before he came down to live among us.

Before the time of the Bible, people erected stone monuments to mark that point when the sun would turn back from its southwards progress into the gloom, and another year would start to grow.  In the darkest times there is hope for the future and better things to come.

This is the promise of our faith.  Our God has come down to be with us and share with us - as Wesley put it “And we the life of God shall know, for God is manifest below”.  God has not left us to face the darkness alone - in Jesus he came to face the darkness, too, and in coming through it from death to life brings new life to us as well.

The light of Christ continues to shine in the world and - as one of my favourite Bible verses (John 1:5) says - “The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has never overcome it”.
May the light of God shine in your life at this time.

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Steve Judd

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The URC has a tradition of shared leadership between the Minister and the Church Elders.  So the monthly messages will sometimes come from our URC Associate Minister, Wendy, and sometimes from an Elder.​