Christmas things

Now it’s almost advent, here are some Christmassy things (NB see also my other post on Advent things) that might be useful. Sorry it’s a bit of a jumble of things all together. Please do feel free to use any of the pictures in any way that’s helpful. I’ve marked whether the words can just be used freely or if they need to go on your CCLI return.

Could be any shed, really
This is Mary and Joseph, just after Joseph wakes up from the dream in which the angel tells him they have to leave everything and run to Egypt.
Another family at Holy Innocents
Another mother at Holy Innocents
image
image
image
Flight into Egypt

Some more clipart-y images:

advent wreath
annunciation
angel choir
christingle
euch-angels
euch-nativity
mother and child

people in church doorway
praying
DSC_1392
candle clipart

A simple Christmas carol to the tune of the Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy:

Little baby, sweetly slumbering,
Cradled and cuddled in Mary’s loving arms.
In the sky are angels gathering,
but for now, here below, all is still and calm.

Little baby, our Emmanuel,
God with us, one of us, born to be our king.
Little baby, while you slumber,
Far above you angels sing.

We know you came to save us all…
But how can God become so small…?
For God so loved all he had made
He sent his Son the world to save……

Little baby…

An easy Christmas song for children to sing
The tune is ‘Here we go round the mulberry bush’.

Sing of the time the angel came, the angel came, the angel came,
Sing of the time the angel came to bring the news to Mary.

Sing of the birth at Bethlehem, at Bethlehem, at Bethlehem,
Sing of the birth at Bethlehem, the baby in the stable.

Sing of shepherds from the hills, from the hills, from the hills,
Sing of the shepherds from the hills, who came to worship Jesus.

Sing of the brightly shining star, the shining star, the shining star,
Sing of the brightly shining star, that led the kings to Jesus.

Sing of the love of God on earth, God on earth, God on earth,
Sing of the love of God on earth, that brings us close to heaven.

Star of wonder (Tune: Sing Hosanna) – Christingle song for Epiphany

We give gold for a king, keep us serving,
We give gold for a king today,
As we give, it is Christ we are serving,
We’ll keep serving Jesus every day.

Star of wonder! Lead us onwards,
Show the way to find the world’s true light.
Star of wonder! Lead us onwards,
Shine around us through the night.

We bring incense today, keep us praying,
We bring incense to him today.
For the needs of the world, keep us praying.
Keep us praying to him every day.

Star of wonder…

We bring myrrh to remember his passion,
As he shared in his people’s pain,
In our lives we will show his compassion,
As we live for Jesus every day.

Star of wonder…

The easiest paper nativity scene ever – instructions and template

And a couple of links to things I’ve come up with for Christingle: 

The original ‘Sparkly Christingle Talk’ (the one with the iron powder)

How to make a Christingle: some prayerful reflections

Looking slightly further ahead: 

The Epiphany Game

A Very Simple Epiphany Song (to the tune of Sing Hosanna)

A hymn about light (that might do for Epiphany if you really squint)

Dark is the night

A hymn for Passiontide to Easter Eve 2020, as a contribution to ‘words for difficult times’.
(Tune: Eventide, aka Abide with me)

Here is a video of the hymn, with me singing and my son recording and producing it:

And the text for those using screen readers:

Dark is the night, the passing hours are long,
Lone voices whisper sorrow’s silent song,
Each faltering prayer will fear it’s made in vain,
When will we sing the world to life again?

Dark is the night; not all are blessed with sleep.
Some wake and work, and some must watch and weep:
Angels disguised, they tend a world in pain,
Off’ring the hope that there’ll be life again.

Dark is the night, the silent hours are slow,
Heav’n’s tears anoint the suffering earth below,
Blessing with dew the secret springing grain,
Pledge that the world will soon know life again.

How big is a tree?

How might we measure
a mustard tree, Lord?
By metres or cubits?
Why, no, he replied,
For the measure that matters
Is this: hospitality.

How big is a tree?

Can it offer a perch to bird on the wing?
Can the pair of small sparrows
(once bought for a penny)
Have room here to build
an affordable nest?
Can they nurture their young,
In safety away from the predators
Prowling the night?
That is the way that we measure a tree.

Like the wilderness oaks
That offered their shelter
to Abraham, Sarah, and all that they had,
In order that he would be able
to offer the same to the visiting strangers
Who brought them the promise of hope
And the chance to fulfil the command
To be fruitful and fill all the land.

Like the wilderness broom bush
That gave to Elijah permission to stop,
And to sit and give voice to his grief and despair,
a place to find rest and be nourished
So he could continue his journey
To and come to the cleft in the rock
Where he met God in silence.

Like the sycamore tree
That was sturdy enough
To carry the weight
of a man who was rich
but had nothing of worth.

Like the tree that was felled
To be shaped like a cross
And offer a place
For all the world’s pain
to be faced and embraced
by the man who said,
That’s how you measure a tree.

When we measure with numbers
And money and cost
And reduce all the value
To what can be counted
We’ll find we have lost
All sense of what counts:

Our chances to offer the shade of a tree in the heat of the sun;
the grace to receive, sit down and admit that we cannot go on;
a way to stand tall when we’re burdened by all of the things we have done.
A place to feel safe, to love and be loved: a place to call home.

Hands holding a hazel nut

The seed is so small.
It’s a universe held
in the palm of God’s hand.
A hand that’s the only hospitable scale
for the measure of worth
For the God who loves everything.

 

Harvest resources

It must be time to post something about harvest – here’s a collection of stuff that might be useful.

Some all age ideas

  1. The four corners of God’s love (not my idea – I learnt it from a Sally Army officer ages ago!)
    Start with a large square or rectangular piece of paper, and announce that this is the four corners of God’s love. Say, ‘It’s my piece of paper, so it’s the four corners of God’s love for me.’  Count them out to make sure.
    Ask, ‘What would happen if I cut off one of my corners and gave it away?  I have four, but if I gave one away, how many would I have?’  You may get the answer, ‘three’.
    Cut off one corner, give it to someone in the congregation, and count your corners again. You have five! You had four, you gave one away, and you have five. And the other person has three. That’s eight whole corners of God’s love!
    Try it again with another corner. And get one of the recipients to try it with one of their corners etc. Keep counting up the new total of corners until everyone loses count.
    Reflect on generosity, abundance, giving, God’s providence, blessings given and received….
    Encourage everyone to take their ‘corner’ home as a reminder.
  2. Ready steady cook
    Ask members of the congregation to come forward and pick out five items from the donated produce and say what they’d cook with them – get everyone to vote on the best idea.
    Reflect on how bringing the gifts together means we can do amazing things with them – maybe we each brought only one gift, but God multiplies what we give.
  3. World map
    Draw a rough outline of a world map on a double bedsheet and lay it down on the floor  – as people bring their gifts of produce, invite them to place their gift somewhere near its (possible) country of origin. Have some information displayed about some of the key producing nations and what life is like as a farmer/producer there. During your talk, look at some of the foods, and trace their journey from field/forest/ocean to plate.  You could
    (a) Say a prayer for each stage of the food’s journey
    (b) Talk about fairtrade and related issues
  4. Place mat grace
    Give everyone an A4 piece of paper with a simple place setting drawn on it, and some pens. You can also provide glue, scissors and old food magazines for those who like to cut and stick.
    Invite people to decorate their plate with words or pictures that remind them to say thank you for their food.
    Teach everyone a simple grace that they can use at lunchtime when they get home. Invite them to write it on their placemat. This might be something quite traditional, or something sillier – or have a variety to choose from. Popular options might be:
    (a) For these and all God’s blessings may his holy name be praised.
    (b) Rub a dub dub, thanks for the grub!
    (c) (sung) One, two, three, four, five, thank you God that I’m alive, six, seven, eight, nine, ten, thank you God for food, Amen.
    (d) (sung) Praise God from whom all blessings flow, praise him all creatures here below, praise him above ye heavenly host, praise Father, Son, and Holy Ghost.
    Alternatively, you could write a variety of graces on the reverse of the paper so that they’re all provided.
    If you have the facilities, you could offer to laminate the placemats while people are having coffee after church, so that they’ll last longer.

Poem

Here is the original (longer) version:

We bring our gifts:
The first-fruits of our labour,
or perhaps the spare we do not need,
(an offering to mitigate against our greed).

To the church we bring them,
and into the hands of Christ we place them,
and we say, ‘Take this,
and do with it some miracle:
Turn water into wine again,
or multiply my loaves and fish
to feed a crowd again.’

And Jesus takes them from our hand,
this fruit of the ocean, this product of the land,
and blesses them, accepting back
what always was the Lord’s.
Our gifts will fill the lack
of hungry people,
putting flesh on words
of charity, and making folk
in our small corner of the world
more equal.

We know there is enough for everyone.
But once the leftovers are gone –
taken to the homeless, hungry poor –
what of those twelve empty baskets standing idly by?
Can there yet be more
that we can ask our Lord to multiply?

Into those baskets therefore let us place ourselves,
those parts of us that need transforming,
grace and strength and healing,
the gifts in us that need to be increased and shared
with a greater generosity than we may be prepared
to offer on our own account.

For we are God’s rich and splendid bounty,
seeds, sown and scattered by the Lord in every place.
the human race:
the crowning glory
of the ever-evolving creation story.
We thank the Lord
that he does not just separate wheat from tare,
but takes our very best
then turns us into far more than we are.

And here is the shorter version:

We bring the spare we do not really need
(for surely God will honour all we bring
although it cannot make up for our greed).
And place into Christs’s hands our offering:
“Turn water into wine again,” we say,
“and multiply my token loaves and fish
to feed another hungry crowd today.”
Our gifts, we know, will put some flesh
on words of charity. Then into those
twelve empty baskets, let us place the gifts in us
that need to be increased and shared
with greater generosity than we may be prepared
to offer on our own account.
For we are God’s most rich and splendid bounty,
sown as seeds and scattered by the Lord
in every place.
the human race:
the crowning glory
of the ever-evolving creation story.
We thank God that he does not only separate the wheat from tare,
but takes our very best then turns us into far more than we are.

oOoOo

Clipart and assorted autumnal pictures

  wheat sheaf clipart       The whole world in his handfeeding of teh 5000

harvest     foodharvest festival clipart

 

hands held out     19th sept 2014 005broken bread

 

Pontius Pilate’s random thoughts about how it’s everyone else’s fault

The eastern sky was liquid-red this morning.
Though the sun’s well up, the air is cold,
There’s something dark – a shepherd’s warning?
That’s the phrase, I think. And I’ve been told
They had a shepherd-king, once, long ago.
A king! Imagine that. Who’d want to rule
A people who, in fear, would stoop so low?
They’d throw their own man to the wolves. The fool!
He had his chance to plead his cause and sway
My judgement. I am not the one to blame.
Is this the truth? I don’t care either way.
Die now or later? End result’s the same.
I take the bowl and watch the ripples still.
“You have no power over me” he said.
He’s right. I soak my dirty hands until
Some quirk of sunlight turns the water red.