Letter from the Vicar Dec 2007

Dear Friends,

How time flies when you are enjoying yourself! It almost seems as though I cannot remember life before Oxfordshire! And soon we will be celebrating our first Christmas together.

There is always something special about a new baby. We smile and exchange nonsense with strange babies we have never met before. ‘Who do they look like?'  ‘What are they called?' They are all unique, yet all have something of their parents in them. You know how it goes:    ‘She's got her mother's nose.'  ‘You should hear him when he's hungry, he's got his father's temper.'

At Christmas time we are drawn to engage with a special baby called Jesus. We remember a baby born in a stable in faraway Bethlehem. This baby is unique too but things are a bit different. With most babies we meet we know the parents well and are eager to be the first to spot bits of the parent in the child. With this baby we do things the other way round and get to know what the father is like by looking at the child. Jesus is God become human, the Word made flesh. All that Jesus will do, all that he will say will lead us to understand God, our Creator better.

At Jesus' birth, we see clearly how God wants humans like us to be involved in the story. The baby needed human parents to care for him as he grew. So too, God invites us to help him as the story of the world unfolds, to help him care for the whole of creation. Jesus grew to show us the Father's way of doing things. We begin to understand that God's way of doing things is to love rather than fear, to seek good for our enemies rather than harm, to forgive rather than get even, to care about people more than possessions, to recognize every person we meet as equally precious and important. Jesus shows us and teaches us how God wants us to live. And each occasion we manage that we make the world a bit better place.

This Christmas may you be enchanted afresh by the Christchild, grow to know the immense love of the Father and be renewed by the Spirit.

Happy Christmas!                                                 With love,  Ros