We live in a country where anxiety is one of the chief problems facing many people, causing real misery to families and spiralling costs in terms of days off work, medical costs and social disruption. Anxiety is that gnawing worry, not necessarily linked to specific issues or causes. It is like living in permanent fog, living without peace, being unable to relax even for a moment. Nervous energy keeps many people going, but it’s a fuel which comes at the price of mental health and inner peace.

What is the Christian to do about anxiety? How can we follow Paul’s instruction to not be anxious about anything (Phil 4:6) when the slightest decision can bring us out in a cold sweat?

The Bible has a lot to say about anxiety. One of the issues associated with anxiety is helplessness, which leads to lethargy and inertia. People feel helpless about their lives. The Bible reminds us that when we are helpless (which is frequently, if we are honest), God is not. In other words, a trust in God becomes the antidote to the helplessness of anxiety. It doesn’t matter if we can’t solve the problems. God can, and even if He doesn’t, He is there with us to help us through. We don’t have to run the universe (or even our own households) on our own. God is there to help. It’s His job.

Paul’s antidote to anxiety, the reason he can be so cheerfully confident even when in prison, is to bring all our requests to God in prayer. (Phil 4:6-7) Peter tells us to cast our anxiety on God because He cares for us. (1 Pet 5:7) We can live carefree before God because He most certainly cares for us.

Children don’t worry about where the next meal is coming from or how the frazzled parent will buy the Christmas presents they are confidently asking for (or at least, they shouldn’t have to.) That’s not their problem. We too don’t have to carry our problems with us. We can safely leave them with God and marvel then at the miraculous ways He sorts things out.

Anxiety is crippling, debilitating, sorrow-inducing and frankly too heavy a burden for us to bear. Let God daily bear your burdens (Ps 6819, Matt 11:28-30) so you don’t have to.

The Narnia Experience has been nearly a year in the making, with the original idea coming from an apparently throwaway comment from a friend of mine, Pat Moore, who said, ‘I have an idea about a Narnia event for Christmas…’ Pat has been heavily involved in the planning of this fun day, buying beautiful props in the January sales and singing and reading on the day itself. It’s wonderful to have someone to bounce ideas off and who shares your crazy creative desire to do things on a grand scale!

Volunteers from local churches and our ‘Mindful Moments’ sessions have made props for the event, including a cardboard wardrobe, swords and shields for children to decorate (thanks, Stan!), flower table decorations (thanks for the design, Clair!) and snowflakes in abundance (thanks, Kathy, for leading us in that.) Thanks to Janet, Karen and Garry for making the wonderful banners for both rooms, spending hours cutting out felt letters, sticking them onto banners, creating silhouettes and hemming fabric.

Volunteers from local churches and the community helped to hang snowflakes in the community room (which took 6.5 hours in total!) and to set up for the event on Friday as well as serving tirelessly yesterday. Our thanks to all who helped and served so willingly.

Our thanks to Dearne Ward Alliances for their funding of £520 for the event which paid for Christmas crafts and the snow machine which was so popular with the children. Thanks also to local churches and individuals who baked and financed various aspects of the fun day once the funding was spent up but the project continued to develop! Thanks also to the Salvation Army and to Lianne Pritchard Birdsall and Greggs, Rotherham Onyx Park for donating food for the amazing buffet.

We had a wonderful ‘Churches Together’ event at GPCC yesterday. ‘The Narnia Experience’ looked at C. S. Lewis’s ‘Chronicles of Narnia’, especially ‘The Lion, The Witch And the Wardrobe.’ All year, we have been looking at stories and parables, so it seemed fitting for our last ‘Churches Together’ event of 2023 to look at another popular story and see how this points us to the Christian message of Christ’s love and redemptive sacrifice for us as well as to His resurrection and ultimate victory over evil.

A lot of people have spent a lot of time preparing for this event over months: making a wardrobe, snowflakes, banners and table decorations to turn our building into the magical world of Narnia.

On the day, funding from Dearne Ward Alliances allowed us to do a variety of crafts and to have snow in Goldthorpe!

Crafts included making snow globes, snowflakes, crowns and painting shields and swords (kindly made for us by Stan Bryan) and decorating lion and crown biscuits (made for us by Lisa and Julie, with Zara and Kathy helping the children to create beautiful edible treats!) as well as making sweet wrappers for Turkish Delight.

Our rooms were transformed into a winter wonderland and glory room shimmering with lights and we were privileged to have Julia and Rob from Manvers Photography Club offering families a professional photoshoot at really reasonable prices. (Everything else we did was free for families!)

The Salvation Army, volunteers Bev and Beckie and other food providers such as Lianne Pritchard Birdsall and Greggs, Rotherham Onyx Park gave us a feast fit for kings and queens indeed.

It was lovely to see so many families enjoying the day. We had 168 people attend throughout the event.

The Dearne Churches Together selfie board also got plenty of use!

A seminal moment is a highly influential moment, something which, in its originality and importance, has a deep influence on us. It comes from the Latin word for ‘seed’, and reminds us that from little acorns come great oak trees. Rome wasn’t built in a day, the proverb goes. It takes time to grow the important things in life.

Our family fun days seem ephemeral, to say the least: ‘here today and gone tomorrow’ (I’m full of proverbs today!) But we see each fun day as seminal, in the sense of planting seeds that will, we believe, grow into something sturdy, lasting and beautiful.

The Narnia Epxerience, happening this Saturday between 10 a.m. and 3 p.m. at Goldthorpe Pentecostal Community Church, is another such seed. We are praying that the beauty of the building’s transformation, the simplicity of a story, the wonder of music and film and art, will, for a short time, transport us to another world and remind us of lasting values such as love, valour, faith, sacrifice, the dangers of envy, covetousness and betrayal.

Can these values really change our ordinary, everyday lives? Can such events really be anything more than another few hours of entertainment in the plethora of Christmas activities happening in the Dearne area?

One of the quotes from “The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe” which has stuck with me is “We have nothing if not belief.” Faith – or belief or trust – is at the heart of Christianity. Hebrews 11 talks about faith being essential to please God, ‘the firm foundation under everything that makes life worth living’, as the Message version puts it. We pray that The Narnia Experience will be a seed that helps faith to grow in the families from our local community and that that faith will be the fuel to a life grounded in God.

3D pictures can look really effective, fooling us into believing there is a hole in the pavement when there is not, but they remind us that reality is often more complex than we like to believe. Christianity is often presented as the solution to suffering, and there is truth in this, but to say there will never be any suffering in life once Christ is accepted is not the full story. God does help us; Psalm 18 reminds us that God rescues us and draws us out of situations which overwhelm us; He is our refuge and strength, an ever-present help in trouble. (Ps 46:1) Psalm 34:47 and Psalm 37:39-40 all remind us of God’s deliverance and help, but there are times when suffering comes on us. Jesus reminded us that the world hated Him and will hate us; our very difference to the world means there is an inevitable reaction (see John 15:18-19).

Heb 2:10 reminds us that Jesus was made perfect through what he suffered. He experienced insults, opposition, rejection, betrayal and a tortuous death, but this reminds us that suffering helps us to be complete. (Heb 2:17-18) We grow and develop as we go through problems and suffering. Paul – who was used mightily by God to bring healing and deliverance to others – suffered (see 2 Cor 12:7-10).We do not know the form of his suffering (the ‘thorn in the flesh’) , but he was told by God that his weakness actually reflected God’s glory and the comfort he received from God, he was able to pass on to others. (2 Cor 1:3-5). Suffering equips us to help others.

Suffering produces perseverance in us, teaching us to push through. Suffering is designed to refine us and make us better (not bitter.) We are sustianed through hope (Rom 8:16-17).In any situation, God is able to deliver us from it, heal us from it or take us through it. Any suffering we experience is used by God for the best for us. We can trust God to help us, no matter what.