With God's help, we aim to form a worshipping, witnessing and caring community in which all may be supported as they grow in faith, and may use their individual talents to bring about God's Kingdom, locally and in the wider world.
Christmas is loud isn’t it? So much expectation.
So many voices telling us how to celebrate; what to wear; what to eat and drink; what to watch and what to buy. It can all become quite overwhelming.
In the preparation times, known as Advent, that lead up to Christmas, the Methodist Church are inviting everyone to 'hush the noise'. I dont think they are saying we need to go around on slippered feet telling everyone to 'shsh'; afterall, the voices of children and adults of all ages and walks of life do need to be heard!
It seems to be a gentle suggestion that maybe we could each create a little time and space to think about the 'noisy demands' on our lives and pause in its busy-ness. Then, listen!
Listen once more to the sounds of creation; to the sounds of our inner being where the love song that the angels bring, this and every Christmas, is sung. In the words of Edmund Sears' carol, it was on the midnight clear that the angels first sang it more than 2,000 years ago.
Yet with woes of sin and strife, the world has suffered long;
beneath the angel-strain have rolled two thousand years of wrong;
and man, at war with man, hears not the love-song which they bring.
O hush the noise, ye men of strife, and hear the angel sing!
The world is noisy, but are you ready to pause? The angels are just waiting for us all to join in.