Tag: advent
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Advent Reflections: Something About Mary
When I was ten, I played Mary in my school nativity; and I’ve remembered the words of my solo ever since (twenty two years at the last count!) “Lord as you’ve spoken, let it be, may your will be known through me” Just a few years younger than it’s believed Mary herself was when she…
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Advent Reflections – Birthing
I’ve never told my birth story publicly. It was far from the candle filled water birth I’d imagined – in fact it was the total opposite of what I’d hoped. Three types of induction, hooked up to monitors, pethidine and an epidural before my newborn was whisked away for observations and antibiotics. Within hours, I…
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Advent Reflections – Journeying
Throughout the Bible, God’s people are on the move, and God seems to do much of His work in people through their journeys. Abraham’s journey to Canaan. The Israelites protracted journey to the Promised Land. Mary and Joseph’s journey to Bethlehem in the months before Jesus’ birth. We can but imagine the maelstrom of emotions…
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Advent Reflections Week Two – Accepting
When I decided to use the carmelite themes to reflect this advent, it was this word accepting that captivated and confused me in equal measure. For me at least, it conjures the concept of Elisabeth Kubler-Ross’ famous five stages of grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression and at last, acceptance. It’s the pinnacle stage in this…
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Advent Reflections Week One – Waiting
This year for advent, I’m going to reflect each week on the Carmelite themes of Advent; waiting, accepting, journeying and birthing. Having read about them in author Sarah Bessey’s advent reflections, it struck me that they sound to me like stages of grief and lament and so I want to explore. Our emotional lives don’t…
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Book Review: Redeeming Advent
We are well and truly into November now, so I finally feel happy to start talking about the upcoming festive season (in my house, I don’t start thinking about Christmas until after my husband’s November birthday, but now that’s passed it’s time to look forward to the celebrations). So as we do all the practical…
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Let There Be Light
“The people walking in darkness have seen a great light, on those living in the land of deep darkness a light has dawned.” Isaiah 9:2 Let there be light. These words were the beginning of everything, the light came and God’s creative power was revealed in all its splendour for the first time. They are some…
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God With Us
“The virgin will conceive and give birth to a son, and they will call him Immanuel” (which means “God with us”). Matthew 1:23 God with us. They are words we hear often at this time of year. They are words I ended the first blog of this series with, in fact. With familiarity, however,…
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Chosen and Choosing
Obedience doesn’t have a very good reputation. It summons up the idea that we are giving up what we want for what someone else says. And if you’re anything like me and somewhat of a control freak – obedience to someone else’s will isn’t a particularly attractive idea. I can hardly imagine the fear and…
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Christmas Trees and Family Trees
We forget, I think, what a scandal the arrival of Jesus was. Not only did He come to unmarried teenaged parents. He came in poverty, instead of royalty. It was the noises of a stable which welcomed Him, not an orchestra. What has struck me this week, however, is those verses at the beginning of…
Rachael Newham 