Dear Friends

It’s been a long time since we have enjoyed such an incredibly successful weekend. It began on Thursday evening with the Friends wonderful lecture on Christopher Wren and the rebuilding of London. Then our fair on Saturday welcomed so many people and so many new faces, we raised over £3,300 – that’s an amazing achievement. It was wonderful to see the church so full on Sunday morning for our baptism and confirmation with Bishop Michael Colclough, then to see so many people in church for our Sunday afternoon concert. Events like this take time, organisation and commitment. I am so very grateful, as I’m sure we all are, for all those who arranged and delivered these wonderful events. For all your hard work and dedication – thank you!  After all that we have experienced as a church and as individuals over the last 20 months it is a delight to be able to welcome people and events back at St Nicholas.

As you will all know Sunday is Advent Sunday and we begin a new Church year. It is often said that faith communities do their theology as a result of crisis. I’m thinking about the children of Israel who escaped persecution in Egypt. Or the Jerusalem community defeated and deported by King Nebuchadnezzar to captivity in Babylon. Post Easter the young Church embarked on an amazing journey of theological discovery. Questions such as ‘Where is God in all of this’  , ‘Who will accompany us on our journey?’ are the bedrock of our theological enquiry. On every occasion, people found answers – not always the ones they were expecting, or hoping for, in retrospect they realised that they were encouraged to travel forward to a new adventure. There have been times in the last 20 months when the way forward has not always been clear, accompanied by a fear that we were travelling alone. We are not, God is with us in all our journeying, we just need to be responsive to his call and challenge. Last Sunday was a great sign that our future as a church and a community with God is more hopeful than perhaps any of us thought possible.

Please be assured of my prayers for all of you this Advent. To help us journey on our Advent pilgrimage I will be offering a short Advent meditation on Facebook every Wednesday at 12.00 noon, I hope you will be able to join me.

Remember there are only 29 shopping days to Christmas!!

Fr Simon