Churches December 2023

Special Service

All Christmas Services are listed here.

PCC Meeting 

The next meeting of the PCC is on Wednesday 6th December at 7pm in St. Helen’s Meeting Room.

St Helen's Contact Details

During the Interregnum the Area Dean will be responsible for the Parish.

Rev. Chris Groocock   01670 813358

Website: www.achurchnearyou.com

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Thought for the Month

I am writing this in the week following Remembrance Sunday and it seems, looking at the news, that humanity seems to have learned very little from past history. Wars are still raging in different parts of the world, soldiers are dying in battle, non-combatants are dying as ‘collateral damage’. As a world, we seem to be living in a climate of fear; and fear, whether real or imagined, is a frightening and destructive emotion. When fear dominates, rationality frequently flies out of the window, hope diminishes, and negativity dominates peoples’ thinking and their lives.   

But this is nothing new. It was no different in the Holy land at the time of the birth of Jesus. Violence, killing, destruction and fear were a common feature of life then as now. But the birth of Jesus meant change – not just for the people of Palestine but for the whole of humanity. Jesus was born into this world to redeem a world disfigured by humanity’s inhumanity to each other. Christ was born to bring hope in place of despair; to bring joy in place of fear; to bring love in place of hate.  

So as we approach Christmas, in this, the darkest time of the year for those of us living in the northern hemisphere, and in what may seem to be very dark times for all humanity, we can look with hope, beyond all that darkness, beyond the despair and disappointments of the past and beyond the fear which we may have for the future. As we remember the birth of the Christ-child we are given a hope that moves us on from the dread and fears that sometimes seem to be ever closing in on our lives. 

At Christmas we are reminded that God did not abandon us. He came to us in human form, born into the world as a baby, just like every one of us. It is in that birth, when God ‘pitched his tent with us’, that hope is renewed. The true meaning of Christmas is that, through Jesus, God is revealed as the source of our true hope; a hope that takes us out of the valley of fear into the uplands of courage and confidence so that we know the truth of God’s love for all creation.

Christmas, the nativity of Christ, is that celebration of ‘God with us’; with us here and now, then and always. Let us cast away the darkness and rejoice in coming of the true light into the world.

Happy Christmas and God bless to all.

Dave Wood, St Helen’s Church

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For our other group meetings, please see the Group Activities sections.

Visitors are always very welcome to all our events.

Contact Ian Pagan 788263 idpagan@btinternet.com

Website: www.longhorsleymission.org.uk

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