Services this Sunday (7th January) are at 10.30 a.m. and 6 p.m., with our family service looking at the theme ‘Directions For The Year.’ Come along for activities, worship and digging into the Word of God to find out how to keep to His paths in 2018.

Our church outreaches re-start this week (youth club on Monday at 6.30 p.m. and Parent & Toddler group on Friday at 9.30 a.m.) Please do pray for these groups and encourage people you know to attend them! The youth club provides fun games for children aged 5-11 (including table tennis, pool, table football and air hockey as well as crafts and Wii games) and the toddler group is suitable for babies to 3 year olds, with parents enjoying the chance for a chat with others!

On Tuesday 9th January we have our first ‘Churches Together’ prayer meeting of 2018 at the Salvation Army at 10.30 a.m. Join with Christians from other churches to seek God’s face for our community.

On Thursday 11th January, we will be having a Bible study at 7.30 p.m. when we will be continuing our studies on the Psalms. This week, we will start to look at the Messianic psalms, those which point us towards the life, ministry and sacrifice of our Lord Jesus Christ.

On Sunday 14th January, our morning service will be at Cherry Tree Court at 10.30 a.m.

We have received a letter recently from Bedline, the girl in Haiti we sponsor through Compassion. She will be 8 in March, and we have just had a new photo! Thank you for your faithful support for Bedline and for Amshika in India.

My life is soon to be taken over by mess as renovation and refurbishment takes place in my house. The electrician will soon be arriving to rewire the house; the builder, plasterer and plumber will be hard on his heels, ripping out my kitchen and fitting a new one. I’m in the process of clearing out rooms (all of which have taken on a Tardis-like appearance if the amount of ‘stuff’ being thrown away, given away and packed away is anything to go by!) and I am uneasily anticipating chaos, noise, dust and disruption on levels that make me secretly want to flee the country. (The electrician suggested a holiday to Baghdad ‘so it won’t seem that bad when you return.‘ I’m not convinced he’s joking…)

I’m not the tidiest person in the world and live with a hoarder, and yet I’m finding the thought of all this upheaval unsettling. My clothes are in a suitcase; I’ll be without laundry-washing and cooking facilities for at least two weeks. And when the workmen disappear, it will be left to me to decorate and restore, unpacking all the boxes and bags currently stowed away for safekeeping. It’s a daunting thought.

And yet I know, deep-down, that if I want a safely wired house and that dream kitchen I’ve been waiting for for 30 years, I must first endure the mess. Things have to get worse before they can get better.

Mess is an inevitable part of life. Life cannot always be neatly tidy, everything boxed away. Some traditional churches have even named their attempts to be innovative and creative in their outreach ‘messy church’, acknowledging that conventional services simply don’t appeal to many people and that a different approach is required. Craft activities, children’s songs and food are all hallmarks of ‘messy church’ and all disturb our normal routines.

Since life is often messy, it’s inevitable that church will be too. This process of transformation – whether in the physical realm of refurbishment or the spiritual realm of new birth and growth – is rarely tidy and neat. Just as a baby’s arrival involves physical mess and much ‘stuff’ (nappies, clothes, a cot, a pram and various other necessities which add clutter to a house), so too church growth will inevitably involve change, mess, untidiness and a sense of not being in control…

I will have to submit to the superior knowledge and skills of workmen who are experts in their fields if I’m to see my house transformed. I will also have to submit to a sovereign God whose thoughts and ways are far higher than mine iff I want to see my life and our church transformed. If I’m honest, I will find neither easy, for I don’t like mess and I don’t much like change. But if we are serious about spiritual growth, we have to get used to the mess of change and the uncertainty of not being in control, secure in the knowledge that God is working all things together for good and always finishes what He starts! (Rom 8:28-29, Phil 1:6)

As usual, we started the New Year together at our party, a time for fun, food and silly party games!

Some of the party games were variations on familiar ones, like musical chairs:

 Tony triumphed again…

We also had a quiz about 2017 to complete:

Then there was pass the parcel and charades:

Thanks to all who gave so generously (the food was amazing!), who helped to set up and clear and tidy everything away and to all who came. We pray our fellowship may be sweet this year and our communion strong as we continue our journey with God.

As we reach the last day of 2017, our thoughts inevitably turn also to 2018, the year ahead.

We like to celebrate the start of a new year by joining together to celebrate and have a party, so tomorrow at 4 p.m. we will be gathering in church to enjoy food, fellowship, party games and fun. The parcel has been wrapped; there’ll be lots of silly games, and we can enjoy each other’s company, knowing that we are joined together as members of God’s family through all He has done for us!

We pray this new year will be a time of blessing and spiritual growth, individually and corporately. We are looking forward to joining with other local churches in prayer meetings (the first one will be on Tuesday 9th January at 10.30 a.m. at the Salvation Army), outreach events (the Dinosaur Day at Phoenix Park on 15th April will be great fun and we are looking to hold a joint event on Good Friday too) and are also eagerly anticipating a church wedding in September 2018. Let’s commit to seeking God together in 2018 and to serving Him in different areas to see His kingdom come and His will be done on earth as it is in heaven. We can be those miracle makers Mark spoke about this morning as we allow God to transform all we give Him into something far beyond our wildest dreams.

Mark spoke on the feeding of the five thousand this morning (though since that number did not include women or children, the feeding actually must have been much more!) Speaking from Matt 14:13-21 and John 6:1-14, he commented that this familiar story involved Jesus, His disciples, an unnamed boy and a crowd of people. Each had their part to play in this miracle.

Jesus would probably have preferred solitude and quiet to mourn his cousin’s death, but instead was followed by a crowd of people. He had compassion on them and healed their sicknesses – something which clearly took a long time, resulting in them becoming hungry. Jesus asked His disciples, ‘Where shall we buy bread for all these people?’, a question that tested their faith as they thought about the cost and logistics of trying to feed so many. Jesus already knew what He planned to do (Jn 6:6), but gave them the opportunity to become part of the miracle.

The boy gave his packed lunch to help Jesus and so he too became part of the miracle to feed so many. God takes the little we have to offer Him and multiplies it. Jesus was able to meet the physical needs of the crowd in healing them and to meet their practical needs in feeding them, but by involving them in this miracle, He also fulfilled their spiritual needs and inspired them. Jesus involves people and the little we give Him can change history. We too can be miracle makers as we yield everything to Him. What can He do through us in this coming year?

Garry continued his message on ‘Christmas Light’ at the Christmas Day service. Having explored the idea that God is light (1 Jn 1:5-9) and that Jesus is the Light of the World (Jn 8:12, Jn 1:1-5), he reminded us of our responsibility to share that light (Matt 5:14-16). Once we have received the light of God, that light needs to be front and centre of our lives. Those who belong to clubs are keen to talk about their hobbies; we have far greater news than a hobby to share! Christ wants us to be passionate about what He has done for us.

Jn 3:19 reminds us that light challenges darkness, and we can face a range of reactions to the light of Christ in us. Some people have preconceptions about Christianity (and God) which make them hostile to the light; our job is to live the life so well that those preconceptions are shattered. An example of this is Günther Bechly who organised the celebration of the bicentenary of Darwin’s birth at the Natural History Museum in Stuttgart with a display of a balancing scale where Darwin’s ‘Origin of Species’ more than outweighed all the books on creationism. He decided to read those books for himself and ended up speaking with many of the authors and coming to abandon his belief in evolution which led to the museum terminating his employment. There was a cost to his change of heart and conversion, but he counted that as nothing compared to the liberating light of the gospel.

Jesus is a stone that makes men stumble and a rock that makes them fall (1 Pet 2:6-8). The Greek word ‘scandalon’ was a ‘trap stick’, a snare, and Christ can be offensive to us, pointing out where we are wrong and telling us that God is offended at our sin and we need to repent and accept His forgiveness. Nonetheless, as we walk in the light, His light exposes the darkness and leads others to the light as well. Our responsibility and privilege is to share the light of Christmas throughout the year.