Hi All,

A couple of weeks ago I was privileged to be at the church whilst we were wrapping filling Christmas present boxes for Operation Christmas child.

Indeed I was doing some running around the town thanking all those from the community who had generously given to help make it all possible. We filled over 200 boxes and indeed even then have some boxes over to start next year but the marvellous thing was that everyone was involved in doing something that will bring a smile to a child.

On reflecting on this it struck me that not only is the joy and wonder on a child’s face when they get an unexpected gift wonderful it is also true to say that for many of the children, to whom those presents might be given, the smile in itself may be the best present of all!

I am a child of the 80's and when Band Aid performed 'Do they know it's Christmas' the two most poignant lines to me were 'we let in light and we banish shade' and 'tonight thank God it's them instead of you'.

I always thought that in the act of bringing the light of the world to the world Christians are called to be people reacting to what is sometimes a dark world reminding our neighbours, our community, our world that there is another way. Surely as we worked in community as a community with individuals and traders we were demonstrating this. Just think a box filled in Upton with toys, and sweets, books and pencils might end up in the hands of someone in Bosnia who needs these things to go to school and who knows what they might become or might achieve.

I have at home a very battered and beaten Good News Bible and it was the bible I read and having read it became a Christian. It is a prized possession for many reasons but not the least of these being that it was not mine in the first place – someone gave it to me. For me that act of generosity has led to being here today – you never know what giving something away might do and indeed surely we are better defined not by what we have and hold onto but by what we give away and let go.

As for the line about thanking God - well we may think we have so little but in world terms we really have so much to thank God for - and here I must stop because as I write this, like you when you read it, I must thank God for all I have and as I do so I will imaging the face of the child in Liberia who opens their box in the 40 degree heat to find a woolly hat and whose first reaction is not to say what is this, it’s the wrong colour, shape, size or fashion but whose reaction is to put it on their head and smile, maybe for the first time, because they realise that God, that you and I, love them.

So as we end let’s both stop now and thank God

God Bless

Paul