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A spiritual comment and prayer to start the day with Canon Ann Easter

Good morning!

I wonder when Christmas begins for you? The news talks about Christmas creep – how the busyness of Christmas seems to come earlier every year. I think we had catalogues of suggestions for Christmas gifts before we went on our summer holiday.

Actually, the month before Christmas is called Advent, which means ‘coming’ and the church tries to encourage people to prepare spiritually for Christmas rather than getting the beer and spirits in!

But some people don’t look forward to Christmas at all – some people dread it – people who can’t afford all they’d like to give; people, especially women, who see Christmas just as a lot of very hard work, and people for whom Christmas will be desperately sad because someone close to them has died during the year.

For some of those people, the idea of a Christmas which will be irrevocably full of lights and presents and music has been balanced by carol services which are remembrance services too. I have conducted carol services at our local cemetery, and all those who have had funerals there in the past year are invited.

A lot of people come, and we cry, and we laugh too, as we remember the happier times and sing the familiar carols. It gives us comfort to think of our loved ones in Heaven, still loving us, just as we love them, and every much still part of our family. And, as they leave the chapel, people are invited to light a candle in memory of those they love so that the prayer remains in the holy place long after they have gone home.

The dead go no further than God – and God is very near.

Amen

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