Ivy

I have been pulling out ivy.  I have never planted ivy at any house I have lived in but it has been a constant companion, appearing in just about every garden I have tended.

 

To be honest, I think this is s natural judgment because many years back while living in a bedsit I was given an ivy plant which I planted (undoubtedly contrary to regulations) outside the building.  A few years later I noticed the building façade had turned wholly green and only God and I knew why . . .

 

Ivy is allegedly in some danger of death during English winters but that has never been my experience (unless I do the killing).  It just stays and gets ready to take over more of the garden than it had previously done.  It clings.

 

Edward Bickersteth noticed that too:

 

Ivy, which unsupported would lay on the ground, by clinging can rise high in the air. The more the wind blows, the more it clings to its support and so is safe.  Similarly Christians are linked to God.

Considering Cards - 7. Christmas is for Atheists too!

Today is Sunday, the last Lord's Day before Christmas.

 

But so what?  Why should anyone miss out on the commercial lightfest?  Here's just the card you need if the whole God-Jesus-Prince of Peace-Mary-Manger-Carols-Wise Men-Shepherds-Religion-Bethlehem thing is too much for you.

 

And you dislike Santa too.

 

However - it was sent us by someone who's been an ordained Christian minister longer than me!

Days to Remember: 8. The danger of parking outside the Church (Part 1)

Union Baptist Church is situated on the A404.  There are clues there.  At one end the A404 is Regent Street in Central London.  It is not a quiet road (though long years ago the cows walked along it to the common land east of the town, hence Easton Street.

 

No-one ever knows what the future holds but I am confident that at no time in the years leading up to that winter's night did anyone imagine that people would have to be encouraged to leave the cars they had abandoned on the street outside and come into the warmth of the church for their own safety.  It happened in 2009.

And so it was that we were asked to open our Church as an Emergency Rest Centre for people stranded by the snowy roads and icy hills. Roads normally busy with traffic had only pedestrians struggling between cars and vans abandoned at the roadside.  Read about it here.

Through to 2:00 am people arrived.  Some walked in as though they were arriving for a meeting, some arrived as though they had trekked from the Arctic, one or two looked as though they had been mistakenly delivered by emergency ambulance to us instead of the hospital.

Thirty five people slept for the night at 'Hotel Union'!  About 20 others came through the doors and were fortified and warmed for the next stage of their epic journey home.  Never has the town or Church witnessed the need to be a Town Centre Snow Shelter before!

God, on the other hand, seemed less surprised and to be working to a nicely visible plan (his plans are often invisible of course).

Snowlessness

So we reach the end of January without a snowflake in sight.  If I wanted this I'd have moved to Australia years ago!!  I was feeling miserable enough about a lack of snow when I came across this picture from just before Christmas in Bethlehem.

 

So, after all those over-clever Christmas talks about there obviously being no snow in the place where Jesus was actually born it turns out, this winter at least, to be more snowy than High Wycombe . . .

Open?

Today we had our Open House. 

It's the day when everyone is invited to our house all at once for calories (sorry, mince pies) and tea/coffee.  This is Christmas, after all.

Of course an open house is one thing.  As we discovered last year when there was a couple of inches of snow on our hill, an open road is quite another.

And this year?

Let's make that 5/6 inches of snow, at least in places.  Eight hardy souls made it however!

An invitation is one thing, a way is something else.

Although Jesus is both.

Snow blow

As my car spends its eighth day stuck on the driveway and the snow continues to fall, here is a clip that neatly symbolises the effect of snowfall and ice on Wycombe over the last week . . .

Snow

Last night it was -9 degrees in Wycombe.  The snow is nearly a foot deep on our lawn.  Not a lot is happening around town just now.  But this was January 6th, and that reminds me . . .

If you have the time and incliniation to read this link you will find that, even though human beings in their inabilities no longer work when the winter strangles them in her icy grip, the Great Maker of Winter will still be at work.

Brrrrrr

Tonight we had our second slot for carol singing at our local shopping centre. We understood that we would be joined by another church but, because they wanted to survive until Christmas, they didn't arrive.

Our survival was threatened by the temperature - which was below freezing - and the somewhat inexplicable design of the centre whereby the roof runs out before the shops do. This afforded us a site with a wind ambience resembling the deck of a ship, and a floor temperature mirroring a polar research station.

Cinema-goers hurried by wondering what we were doing there (they would have wondered all the more had they been able to identify our average age underneath our multidinous layers of clothes.) A Shopping Centre operative looked over at us, wondering what we were doing there. On another evening he may have checked our credentials, but tonight he was content that the only offence we might be committing was against our circulatory systems. We wondered what we were doing there. We were, in short, a wonder. A bone-chilled, finger-frozen, teeth-chattering wonder.

Health and Safety considerations would have demanded that we instruct any member of the public who had stopped to listen to us to move on lest they sued us for their frostbite - this might even have been a consideration if someone removed their gloves to accept a leaflet.  In the event no-one was irresponsible enough to risk their well-being by stopping.

With a neat sense of timing one of my aunts had sent a Christmas card that arrived this morning.  It pictured a brightly-lit village church.  In a blizzard.  The choirboys are walking through the snow toward the sanctuary.  The very essence of Christmas, I thought, when I opened the card.

But now I know it is a fraud.

You can stand in the freezing cold.  You can stand and sing carols. 

What you can't do, is do both at once . . .