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Advent Day by Day reflections 2020

  Parish of Central Swansea Advent day by day 2020 Advent is a wonderful but often overlooked season in the church calendar. For many it is associated simply with getting ready for Christmas, but Advent is much more than that. It is a season when we take time out to prepare for the coming again of Jesus, something we celebrate as we mark his birth at Christmas, but something we also await as he has promised to return one day. We wait, not looking up to the skies for something to happen, but we wait celebrating the gift of life and new life through Jesus. We wait, seeking to be more like Jesus as we look to follow his command to love God and to love our neighbour as ourself. Perhaps this year more than ever we can rediscover something about waiting, about longing. It’s been such a difficult year for so many people, but we wait in hope, we wait in expectation and we wait knowing that God has never failed to deliver on any of the promises he makes. Whatever we usually make of the Advent s

Being a blessing to others

  We’re in what is now called the kingdom season in the church calendar – I don’t think it’s a season that is particularly useful as I think our focus must every day of every week be on Christ as the king – the king of our lives, the king of our hopes and aspirations, the king of possibilities for the world and indeed the king of the whole world, so that’s a little hobby horse of mine out of the way.   Having said that, the readings do offer us a focus upon which to reflect on these things in a bit more depth so that’s what I’ll try and do this morning.    Our gospel reading (Matt 25:14-30) is the pretty well known parable of the talents – it’s often been portrayed as a parable about how well we use our gifts, in other words it’s about us, but whilst that may be part of it, I don’t think that’s the biggest part.    The biggest part comes in the first paragraph of what we heard. The master is going on a journey and he distributes his property to his servants to look after. To one he giv

Faith, generosity and thankfulness

  As people I think we are regularly tempted to put our lives into different sections, different compartments. Perhaps we have a work life and a social life. Perhaps a church life and private family time. These are just some options of how we might compartmentalise our lives at times and in reality, we may split it down a lot further than this, breaking down each of those sections more…     But our readings today remind us that three very key things in our lives are actually inseparable both from each other and from the lives of Christians in general. Those things are faith, generosity and thankfulness and as we commemorate a different harvest to usual those things are no less important…    In our gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19) we have this amazing account of Jesus being approached by 10 lepers who asked him for healing – perhaps this year more than ever before we recognise the words in the gospel as they approached Jesus ‘keeping their distance.’ Safe physical distancing was something

Be transformed, experience joy, know peace

  This week we have entered another period of not quite full lockdown, but a time of additional restrictions. News reports tell us of rising numbers of cases of coronavirus once again and it’s a difficult time for many people who, apart from the worries they may have, may be lonely or feel isolated from family or friends, or may be concerned about family or friends. Again there all kinds of worries about money and about jobs…   It isn’t an easy time and it isn’t a time for glib answers such as ‘Trust in God and it will all be ok’, but actually there is something to say for that response ! ‘Trust in God and it will all be ok !’ ‘Ok’ doesn’t mean everything will be absolutely fine immediately, and it certainly doesn’t mean that we won’t have any problems or worries in our lives at any point. Life may still sometimes be a bit tough but with God everything will be ok because ultimately ‘ok’ means that God is still holding us in his care. God’s love is unchanging and absolute.  Paul u

Behaving well

from Helen    Well, what a week last week was. It was a week when we saw people’s true feelings and concerns on the news. We heard political arguments, we heard about more local lockdowns including Caerphilly and we heard the reaction of people to this. Lockdown was not fun and it is still difficult to get used to the new normal, which former Prime Minister Tony Blair described as everything that was not normal before.  Understandably people in Caerphilly are upset. I heard the voices on the news of people feeling unfairly treated because they had done all the right things but others hadn’t which had led to a local lockdown. They were angry and disappointed. I would love to say that I didn’t get fed up of other people’s behaviour in lockdown, it wouldn’t be true. When we find things hard we can all judge others a bit for not living in the way that we have been living. In our readings from the epistle to the Romans (14:1-12) and the gospel of Matthew (18:21-35) we heard about behaviour.