Happy new liturgical year!

Hello friends. Happy New Year—Happy New Liturgical Year, the beginning of the season of Advent—this beautiful time when we look with hope and encouragement, towards the remembrance of the Lord's Nativity, so that we know of His coming into our lives now and into the future. That tells us something about the word Advent itself. It means "to come". And the Lord first came in the Incarnation. The Word became flesh and dwelt amongst us. But the Lord continues to come into our lives often in quite surprising and unexpected ways. And we believe that the Lord will come again. In that judgment of mercy, and hope that we all look forward to. In the Greek, we talk about as Maranatha, “Come, Lord Jesus.” And so I invite you in this time of Advent, this beginning of the new year for us in faith, that you might look for the ways in which the Lord comes into your life. Because He is indeed doing so. So finding—discovering those ways of His presence with you and in you.

As we come towards the end of this calendar year, I also just wanted to offer you my prayer as the busyness of opening up a bit more, trying to fit in all the things that need to be done before the end of the year—things that are probably occupying your attention. So I just want to encourage you to find little moments of quiet, stillness, so that that presence of the Lord, who comes to you personally, might be felt in your own life through these quite hectic days, leading to the end of the year.

As it is in fact just coming into December, and into towards Christmas, I'm mindful that, in these opportunities that we've had to talk together, are perhaps coming to their close as well—their conclusion. So, I intend to be able to speak with you up to Christmas time in this weekly message and then I'm actually having a little bit of a break myself after Christmas. And so I've got a couple more of these opportunities to speak with you, as we've done throughout this time of the pandemic. (Just to give you a bit of a word of warning about that!)

But friends at this stage, know that the Lord is coming into your life right now. Find Him. Discover Him. And allow Him to bring His gift of life and love and hope.

Until next week.