<blockquote type="cite"><div><div>£1,000 could make a big difference to the work we doas a church and in our community That’s why we’d be really grateful if you could nominate us in Ecclesiastical’s 12 days of giving. Your nomination could be the one that wins us £1,000.Open to eligible charities in the UK, Republic of Ireland, Channel Islands and Isle of Man, Ecclesiastical will be donating a total of £120,000 to 120 charities over 12 days in December and we’d love to be one of them. We will use this money to expand our FunDay@4 children’s programmeIt’s quick and easy to nominate us. Just visit movementforgood.com/12days, click ‘nominate now’ and enter our details. You will see on the opening page asmall box to tick maked "registration exempt" and then enter the name of Dunsfold PCC in the nomination.Nominations are open now, closing at midnight the day before each draw. Charities not drawn will be carried over to the next draw, and draws will take place each weekday from 7 December to 22 December 2020.The more nominations we get, the greater our chance of winning, so please spread the word to your friends and family.Thank you in advance for your time and support.John Gray Treasurer</div></div></blockquote>
It may be just me, but I must admit that I’m struggling to get my head round Christmas and the new Government regulations about households! Reading the wonderful Isaiah 43 this morning, with its vision of sons and daughters being gathered from the north and the south, the east and the west, sent me back to the relevant website to try to work out just who could join us for Christmas this year among our sons and daughters (three of them in Cambridge, the east, and one in Nairobi, the south) let alone my brother (from Durham, the north) and my mother (from Somerset, the west). And how about other guests we’ve usually invited to join us for the big day itself? It’s all very complicated especially with the three household limit.This idea of ‘household’, of course, has its roots in many ancient cultures (including Hebrew culture), where it generally referred to what we would call the ‘extended family’, including any live-in servants the family employed, any animals, and often the property itself. The Greek word ‘oikos’ (from which we derive our words ‘economy’ and ‘ecology’) was then taken up by the New Testament writers to speak of ‘God’s household’ and ‘the household of faith’ – a far broader idea, reminding us of our familial commitments to our Christian brothers and sisters and not just to our natural and nuclear nearest and dearest. Christmas, of course, is the one time of year where we often recapture that ‘household’ vision, drawing together those within our extended families (and often some outside of them) not least to live out something of that vision of a God who ‘sets the lonely in families’ (Psalm 68:6). Whether wisely or not, the Government has recognised that such a vision, properly regulated, should take precedence over health concerns for the newly-designated ‘five days of Christmas’ from December 23rd. But having lived in extended households for almost half of my adult life - sharing our homes with a wide range of singles and families, among them a whole clutch of interns and prospective ordinands - I wonder whether this extraordinary year might refocus our minds on what a Christian household truly entails post-pandemic. Not necessarily travelling the path of community living, though I for one would recommend that where the circumstances are right. But discovering fresh ways to ‘gather’ God’s people from the north and the south, the east and the west, to ‘set the lonely in families’, even to ‘live in love and faith’, to coin a phrase. Households are for life, not just for Christmas. Every BlessingBishop Andrew
