RADCLIFFE METHODIST CHURCH

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MINISTERS MESSAGE

Ministers Letter

 

 

Dear friends,

 

We have already had our first Christmas letter, from Esther, one of our oldest and dearest friends.

When my husband Richard and I and our baby son went to work with the Methodist Church in Sri Lanka, way back in 1979, we were sent to Esther’s village. We did not know any Sinhala, the local language, and Esther and her husband Lal did not know any English. Without many words, Esther went out of her way to welcome us into their home and into their lives with Christian love.

By this I mean that we, as strangers, were welcomed as friends. As foreigners, we were accepted, with all our strange and incomprehensible ways. Esther’s young and struggling family helped our young and struggling family in ways that have left a deep bond of friendship and gratitude. At that time they had very little by way of time and energy or material things to give and share. But they were immensely generous. In a country where family is all-important and where we had none, we felt that we had somehow been included and accepted and loved: almost adopted.

Christmas is the time of our Christian year when we think most about God’s love and acceptance of us, about God’s inclusion and adoption of each one of us into the family of God’s people.

As we look around at the people we know in the church, we can remember and be happy about the fact that Jesus is re-making us, not just as nodding acquaintances, but as brothers and sisters who love and respect and trust one another.

But don’t stop with the people you know. Look around the village, and in all the places you travel to over the Christmas period. Even the foreign places like Bingham! Look at all the people you don’t know and all the people you probably wouldn’t want to know! It is God’s plan, in sending Jesus to be our brother, to remove all the barriers and boundaries we set up between strangers and family, foreigners and friends. God’s plan is that there will be ‘peace on earth and goodwill to all people ‘ because, through the salvation brought to us in Jesus, everyone will be a brother or a sister to everyone else, regardless of age, race, political views, or anything else that may separate or divide.

I pray that this Christmas time we will each of us be able to go out of our way to offer Christian love and care, not just to our loved ones and friends; not just to our church family and friends but to the stranger too.

 

A happy and peaceful Christmas to you all,

 

Janet