Christmas Charities

We like to give you advance notice of some of the charities we will be looking to support over the Christmas season. They will be as follows:

 Christingles Services – As always, we’ll be taking a collection for the Children’s Society, which seems particularly poignant this year in light of some of the political ‘discussions’ over the true level of child poverty and homelessness in our country.

 Carol, Midnight & Christmas Day Services – (i) The Bromley Homeless Shelter support the homeless by providing a Winter Night Shelter. Further information can be found on www.bromleyshelter.org.uk.  (ii) ‘There is Hope Malawi’, an organisation who work with refugees in Malawi, where it is particularly hard to be in that desperate situation.

 Please pray for all these organisations and the people they are trying to help.

A Prayer for Advent

Lord Jesus, 
I give you my hands to do your work. 
I give you my feet to go your way. 
I give you my eyes to see as you do. 

I give you my tongue to speak your words. 
I give you my mind that you may think in me. 
I give you my spirit that you may pray in me. 

Above all, 
I give you my heart that you may love in me your Father and all people. 
I give you my whole self that you may grow in me, so that it is you, Lord Jesus, who live and work and pray in me.

Lord Jesus, I give you my spirit that you may pray in me.

I give you my heart, Lord that you may love in me.

Remembrance Sunday

We don’t always air the entirety of Binyon’s well-known Remembrance poem, ‘The Fallen’, so here it is in all it’s poignancy.

They shall grow not old, as we that are left grow old;

Age shall not weary them, nor the years condemn.

At the going down of the sun and in the morning

We will remember them.

They mingle not with laughing comrades again;

They sit no more at familiar tables of home;

They have no lot in our labour of the day-time;

They sleep beyond England’s foam.

But where our desires are and our hopes profound,

Felt as a well-spring that is hidden from sight,

To the innermost heart of their own land they are known

As the stars are known to the Night;

As the stars that shall be bright when we are dust,

Moving in marches upon the heavenly plain,

As the stars that are starry in the time of our darkness,

To the end, to the end, they remain.