We are busy preparing for activities over the next two months; here are some dates for the diary…

November

• Wednesday 2nd November is the last day to bring in items for the Operation Christmas Child Christmas appeal (sending presents to children abroad.)

• Saturday 5th November (10 a.m. – 12 p.m.) is our ‘Take Back The Streets’ prayer meeting and coffee morning. Join us to pray and walk or stay in the building for a cuppa and a chat!
• Sunday 13th November we hope to have Fredrick and Reeba from India visiting and have guest speaker Joy Gascoigne with us in the evening  (6 p.m.)
• Wednesday 16th November (2 p.m.) is the ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting at Furlong Road Methodist Church in Bolton-on-Dearne

December

In addition to our usual services, we are involved in some extra Christmas activities:

• ‘Christmas @ The Embankment’ on Sunday 11th December (1-3 p.m.) with Christmas crafts and carol-singing at Goldthorpe Railway Embankment
• 4FrontTheatre will be in Goldthorpe with their new Christmas pantomime ‘Jilly Rogers’ Christmas Adventure’, sponsored by Dearne Churches Together. They will be performing for pupils at Lacewood Primary School in the morning and for pupils of Sacred Heart Primary School in the afternoon, with a community performance at GPCC in the evening at 6 p.m. This performance is already fully booked!
• Our Parent & Toddler group will have 2 Christmas parties on Wednesday 14th & Friday 16th December. Raffle prizes are needed for these to help fund the parties and purchase of Christmas presents for our toddlers.
• Our carol service will be on Sunday 18th December at 6 p.m., featuring traditional carols and more modern songs from the ‘Boogie-Woogie Nativity’ by NIki Davies

• On Christmas Day, we will have a morning service at 10.30 a.m. but no evening service.

We had a wonderful day on Wednesday at the ‘Churches Together’ family fun day, celebrating the theme ‘Amazing Me, Amazing You!’ and looking at how we are fearfully and wonderfully made in God’s image.

We had gingerbread men to decorate:

We decorated wooden peg people:

We looked at handprints and fingerprints:

We decorated paper people, using materials to clothe them:

There was also scratch art and bookmarks to make:

All in all, it was a great day, with over 100 people present. Our thanks to Alison’s team from the Salvation Army who fed us so well and to all the church volunteers who made this such a fun day – and to all who came along!

At this time of year, many of us are thinking about what gifts we can give to our family and friends to celebrate Christmas. I usually enjoy buying Christmas presents, but it can be difficult if someone doesn’t seem to particularly want anything or when finances don’t permit many things to be bought or if the gift someone really wants is just beyond us.

This time of year always prompts me to reflect on value. What makes an item of jewellery or clothing ‘worth’ a certain amount? Who decides what the latest ‘must-have’ item is and how much it should cost? Value seems to be in the eye of the beholder even more than beauty; what one person considers reasonable and proportionate seems extortionate to someone else!

I then inevitably move on to consider all the gifts which are (to me, at least) immensely valuable, but which money can never buy. These include health, happiness, peace, acceptance, harmony and contentment.

The older I get, the more I value contentment as the most precious gift. Contentment includes both happiness and satisfaction, and as such seems to me to be valuable beyond money.

So many of our problems in life seem to be bound up with dissatisfaction. We see this manifested in ingratitude on a daily basis; no matter what gift you give to some people, they are dismissive of it. There’s always a better item out there which would lead to that elusive happiness. Even the rich are not necessarily content. Dissatisfaction is a poisoned chalice, often filled with resentment and entitlement that sour our lives unpleasantly.

Contentment, on the other hand, oozes gratitude, thankfulness and peace, and as such seems to me to be a precious gift.

Contentment is seen in the little things in life: the well-fed baby nestled in its mother’s arms, sleeping without a care in the world. Contentment is seen in the child happily taking apart a cardboard box and playing with it for hours. Contentment is seen when we realise we are blessed by God, that His undeserved favour is ours and that He will meet all our needs according to His glorious riches in Christ Jesus.

I wish I could wrap contentment in a shiny box, adorned with a sparkly bow, and give it to all those I care about as my Christmas present to them. But contentment is not mine to give, alas. I can only pray that God will open people’s hearts to receive this gift which He freely gives and enables all to see its value and embrace the satisfaction He provides, which money can’t buy.

Garry spoke this morning from Genesis 42:35-43:10 about the need to respond to truth correctly. Jacob, when confronted with the news that Simeon had been kept behind in Egypt and would only be released if Benjamin went there, refused to countenance that idea, effectively lamenting that he had been deprived of a second son (even though Simeon was still alive!) Reuben tried to persuade his father to let Benjamin go back and even put his two sons up as collateral for Benjamin, but Jacob refused point-blank. He was prepared to risk famine for all his family rather than take a risk.

Eventually, of course, Jacob came face-to-face with reality, as we all must at some point in our lives. The longer we avoid truth and reality, the bigger the crash can be when we face it. Truth can be unpleasant, painful and even devastating, but lies are worse. We cannot afford to ignore truth (or we will end up with eternal damnation; we have to accept God’s word as truth in order to be saved.)

If we build on anything but truth, we are building on a shaky foundation (Matt 7:26). Truth is reality. God is true. Jesus came ‘full of grace and truth’ (John 1:14); he was a man of integrity who taught the way of God in accordance with the truth. (Matt 22:16) He gives us the Spirit of truth (John 16:13) and we are told that God’s word is truth and that it has the power to sanctify us. (John 17:17) Ultimately, only the truth can set us free (John 8:32), because everything which is not true constrains and restricts us.

Truth is good for us, enabling us to grow (Eph 4:15).If we depart from the truth, we will end up departing from it (2 Tim 2:18).We must avoid distorting the truth (Acts 20:30-31) and refuse to suppress it. (Rom 1:18) Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, the winner of the 1970 Nobel Prize for literature, was exiled because of his criticism of Stalin in 1945. He was not released until 1974 and from this long period of imprisonment urged people to ‘live not by lies.’ Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychologist whose book ‘12 Rules For Life’ includes the injunction to always tells the truth, says, ‘If you betray yourself, if you say untrue things, if you act out a lie, you weaken your character. If you have a weak character, then adversity will mow you down when it appears, as it will, inevitably. You will hide, but there will be no place left to hide. And then you will find yourself doing terrible things.’

In our country, there are many lies being propagated in our schools and in our society, and it will take courage to stand against these lies. God is willing to work with us as we face truth; He can redeem our mistakes and can restore in miraculous fashion, but He is demanding and insists that we face truth and repent of wrongdoing. Jacob tried to carry on regardless, but in the end, he had to let Benjamin go. Facing truth takes courage, but there is no peace without it. Once we have made the decision to live in and by truth, God will take us by the hand and walk with us. He will lead us into peace and joy, into abundant life. We avoid this at our peril. Short-term escapism does not work in the long-term.