The Minister's Message

Dear all,

We’re approaching Christmas, a time when we particularly celebrate God coming to earth in the form of a human being, Jesus Christ.

We’re so used to the Christmas story though that we don’t always see all the surprises that are there within the story. There are the surprises of:

• who God chose to be the baby’s mother; Mary, an unmarried teenager; 

• where Jesus was born; not at home or in a palace but in with the animals;

• who came to visit Jesus; shepherds and then perhaps a year or two later, visitors from the East from a different faith who’d come to look for the new king, bearing some very surprising gifts;

• Joseph, Mary and Jesus having to flee in the middle of the night to a foreign land to escape a king intent on murder.

At any stage it could all have gone wrong, but God came to us to show us what his love looks like and how it works. Be prepared to be surprised by God’s love this Christmas and be open to how God might want you to surprise someone else with his love.

I wish you all a happy Christmas and a peaceful New Year.



Nigel