Jingle Bells

At our carol service on sunday the yougest lad there was singing hi own version of JB, much to his parents shock and everyone elses mirth he belted out how batman smells etc.

We have a service on Christmas eve this year and then immediately following it on Christmas day. I don;t have to go to both I suppose although I have written some drama for Sunday. It is based on a Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens and involves someone going back to church after a while and being visited byt 3 spirirts whilst there. The first spririt shows them what the church used to be like 40 years ago and compares that to now then 2 spirits of the future come and show 2 possible outcomes for the church. Death or Life really. My contention is that if we carry on doing as we have done before (which I refer to as nothing) in the hope that our fortunes will somehow miraculously change (where in the Bible did Jesus perform a miracle that didn’t involve some sort of change int he recipient???) and everyone will realise what they have been missing and flock back, then we are heading for death. If we look on the arrival of Jesus as a great sign of hope for the church and it’s people and actually get off our backsides and make something happen then the future could be very rosy indeed.

But someone doesn’t want this performed. Someone thinks it’s inappopriate for Christmas when people don’t want to be reminded of the past in case it upsets them and they don’t want to confront the present in case it upsets them and they can’t possibly face the future in case … well you get it by now.

So we’ll just spend the time being nice to each other and pretend for a few days that the only problems we have are digestion related.

I don’t think I can stomach that