
Dear Friends,
Another year has begun. Thank you to everyone who came to our Christmas Tree Festival and the Christmas Services that followed. Thank you also to those who participated in those services, or who helped put them together. Your creativity and involvement in them is very much appreciated.
In February, our Gospel readings, taken from Luke, remind us just who Jesus is. Jesus is first presented in the Temple in Jerusalem by his parents Mary and Joseph, where they are me in turn by Simeon and Anna. Simeon tells Mary that Jesus is the salvation God has prepared for his people, who will will cause the rising and falling of many in Israel, and be spoken against and opposed. He then spends the rest of his childhood in Nazareth. He next calls his first disciples, who leave behind their previous occupations to follow him. Jesus then begins his ministry in the Galilee and proclaims the Kingdom of God, God’s rule on earth through what he says and does. He also sets out the attitudes and behaviours we should have if we decide to follow him and to love God and those around us, as a result of doing so. The month ends with Luke’s account of Jesus calming the storm on the lake.
Only Jesus can do this, because of who he is: the Son of God, sent into the world to save humanity from the consequences of its wrong-doing through faith in Him. It is this Jesus, each of us is called to worship, love and follow.
God bless,
Andrew