I have found myself looking back over this year and being aware of how quickly it has gone by, must be an age thing!!\u00a0 How much we have achieved together is a sign of true faith which has seen us face all the ups and downs of our lives.<\/p>\n
This time of Advent reminds us of the hope we have in a tiny baby who would grow to be the Saviour of the world.\u00a0 Such love poured out on each one of us from God!\u00a0 A love that brings hope and light into the darkness which pervades our world in these days, a light which cannot be put out no matter what happens.\u00a0 Each one of us holds that light within our hearts and it\u2019s from there it will\u00a0 show itself in the way we speak and act while earnestly praying for peace and comfort to those who know only pain and suffering.<\/p>\n
Jesus was a refugee, born in a place that wasn\u2019t His home, at this time we are all too aware of the Syrian refugees coming to Scotland and being settled into various communities, as we remember Jesus\u2019 birth in a strange place let our prayers be for respect and acceptance, for a willingness to get to know these folks and build strong relationships with them as time goes on.<\/span><\/p>\n We are very blessed in Clincarthill to have a group of young people, YPC, who are very committed to being with us on a Sunday morning and to learning more about what their faith means to them.\u00a0 They will be taking part in our service on the 20th<\/sup> of December as will the Kid\u2019s Church and some of the choir from Mt Florida School.\u00a0 The Parent Partnership have asked if anyone would be willing to help with the teas and coffees at the \u2018Festival of Light\u2019 event on Wednesday, 16th<\/sup> of December \u2013 would you be able to help?\u00a0 If so, please let me know so I can tell the school, thank you.<\/p>\n It has been a real privilege to go along to these meetings and see how committed the parents are to working with the staff to give their children the best education and involvement in so many activities to\u00a0<\/span>broaden their education and experience.\u00a0 Please keep them in your prayers.<\/p>\n As we come to the end of 2015 I would like to thank you all once again for your support, encouragement and prayers, without them I would certainly have struggled to keep things going.\u00a0 But it\u2019s also to say thank you for your own commitment to the work in and around Clincarthill.\u00a0 I realise there are so many of you working away quietly in the background, visiting and keeping those valuable connections to the church which bring hope and love into many homes.<\/p>\n Christmas is a time when many of us get together with our families, for others that\u2019s not the case, may we remember that Jesus is always present no matter the circumstances, He is our bright hope and the One constant in all our lives.\u00a0 May God bless you all during Advent and Christmas.<\/span><\/p>\n Love and Blessings<\/p>\n Joan<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I have found myself looking back over this year and being aware of how quickly it has gone by, must be an age thing!!\u00a0 How much we have achieved together…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-726","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p8z2vw-bI","jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=726"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":727,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/726\/revisions\/727"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=726"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=726"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.clincarthill.org.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=726"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}