DECEMBER 2011 - Vol. 33 No. 12

Dear Friends 

I have returned to parish ministry after ten weeks sabbatical/study leave.  It has been a time of refreshment and challenge.  Unfortunately, towards the end of October, during a visit to my Mum in Stafford, I slipped on a ramp and broke my left wrist.  So I am having to think about what I can and can’t do one handed.  I expect to have the plaster off on 6^th December.

In a hospital waiting room I spotted, across the room, a man I recognised with a teenage boy I had not met before.  The lad was obviously the man’s son; he was just like a younger edition of his father. Not everyone takes after a parent or other relative, but some children show a startling resemblance to another family member from an early age. Some grow up to become more and more like someone in the family. We may hear people exclaim, “You’re just like your mother” or, “You’re the image of your father”.

Jesus, the Son of God, showed an amazing resemblance to his Father.  We are not talking of physical likeness, because no-one has ever seen God.  Nor do we have any description of what Jesus looked like, although it’s highly unlikely that this Jew, born in Palestine, looked anything at all like the blue-eyed, blond haired figment of some artists’ imaginations!  Whatever Jesus looked like, he resembled his Father so closely in character that Paul described him as “the image of the invisible God”. (Colossians 1:15) In Jesus the nature of God is revealed – all the compassion, kindness and unconditional love of God in one perfect, sinless human being.  This is what we celebrate at Christmas, in the birth of the child named, in Matthew’s Gospel, ”Emmanuel” – “God is with us”. (Matthew 1:23) Even in infancy the light of God’s love shining in Jesus was revealed to visitors to the manger. A few weeks later when Mary and Joseph took the baby to the Temple an old man called Simeon and an old woman named Anna recognised him as God’s promised Messiah.

We, too, bear the image of God, though that image in us is marred by sin.  Yet our heavenly Father loves us also as his sons and daughters.  It’s because of his love for us, and for the world, that Jesus came into the world.  In John’s Gospel it says that all who believe in his name are given power to become children of God. (John 1:12) Our heavenly Father sends his Holy Spirit into the hearts of all who will receive him, to begin in us that transformation that will make us more like Jesus.  Jesus is the image of his Father, but if we live our lives close to him we can become more like him, and the light of God’s love can shine in us.

With my love and prayers for a blessed and joyful Christmas

Glynis Hetherington