Dear Friends,
As I write this letter financial mayhem is going on all over the world. By the time you read it governments will have either stepped in and finally brought some stability to the chaos or we will be in total melt down. Let’s hope and pray the latter has not happened!!
At some time when things are a little more stable the blame game is going to start with fingers pointed towards greedy bankers and the “wheeler dealers” of the stock market. The fingers will point and condemn the super rich trying to get richer whilst we suffer the consequences. We will perhaps be quite righteous in our indignation, joining in with all those who suggest that it will serve them right if they lose all they had.
Well, whilst I am not over sympathetic to the “wheeler dealers” of this world, I am also conscious that we all must bear some blame for what has happened. If we are house owners we have relished the extraordinary rise in property prices over the last decade. We have probably used our bits of plastic to buy things we could neither afford nor really needed. We have been very happy to be part of the world of “have’s” rather than the larger part of the world that is made up of the “have not’s”.
Deep, deep down I wonder if you too are a bit like me in being rather relieved that we seem at last to have stepped off the endless tread mill of wanting more and more however much we already have. Perhaps we can all use the current downturn to reassess what is truly important to us and then all we have to do is work very hard at not slipping back to bad old ways.
Christmas will soon be upon us reminding us that Jesus was born, not in a grand palace full of things of great value, but in a stable surrounded by the very ordinary things of life, the basics that we need of food and warmth and shelter and the love of those around us.
Maybe we too can make our Christmas this year a more spiritual, caring, joyous time. To give you some help in heading that way here are a couple of suggestions. Why not:-
1) Tell all your family (including the children!) that you are going to spend no more than £10 in total on all their presents this Christmas and then go out and buy as many little things that they will like as you can for under that amount. You will enjoy the fun of the search for things and they will enjoy the gifts knowing that thought and effort has gone into finding them rather than just money. Then give the balance of what you would have spent to a charity.
2) Do the same thing with food for Christmas, spend no more than half of what you would normally spend and give the rest to a charity supporting the homeless at Christmas.
3) Give yourself and your family the greatest gift of all. Come to Church and meet Jesus this Christmas or, better still, come and get to know Him now so that on the 25th December you can truly celebrate his birthday with him and find out that life is still really wonderful!
We look forward to seeing you. God bless you and those you love,
John Baxter