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Rector's Letter December 2006 Dear Friends, ‘Do not be afraid’. The number of times this phrase occurs in the Bible is illuminating. Mary is told by the angel not to be afraid; likewise the shepherds are so instructed. I use these examples as we’re approaching Christmas. How clever of me to notice! I wonder what made me think of that? No, I’ll not go down the Scrooge road, though I can find myself muttering, ‘Bah humbug’ at times. Isn’t it strange how the politically correct have got so excited about religious artefacts, etc., but there’s never a word about the shops overflowing with so called ‘Christmas goods’ from August onwards? Perhaps unconsciously they have realised that there is a huge gap between genuine expressions of religion and those inspired by consumerism. Anyway, as ever, I digress. It was the fear thing that I was interested in. Fear is a natural response. Without a sense of fear, we would not appreciate danger and take steps to avoid it. Yet excessive fear is crippling and can prevent us living our lives to the full. What brought these thoughts to mind? Well it was a very mundane occurrence – a journey to Kirkcaldy the other night. It’s hardly the North-west frontier – it doesn’t really compare with canoeing up the Amazon, though the amount of water on the roads did not make the comparison totally inapt; to quote Snoopy, ‘It was a dark and stormy night’ – very dark and very stormy. I suppose I hadn’t realised how far away Kirkcaldy is, nor how big a town it is when one eventually gets there. The church is in the north of Kirkcaldy, I was told, but the signposts only had east and west. With my sense of direction, I assumed east to be in the sea. On the way, two young folk dressed in dark clothes decided to leap in front of my car to cross the road and another young lad, on a bicycle without lights, did the same a little way in front of me, but how the car coming in the other direction missed him I don’t know. Eventually, and it certainly seemed like eventually, with the help of someone I’d deliberately followed into a car park to ask directions – I began to feel like a prowler riding the streets looking for anyone fool enough to be out on such a night – I arrived at my destination. The journey had made me increasingly fearful. To be honest, I kept wishing I was back in cosy Dunblane where everything was comfortingly familiar and I felt I knew where I was. Yet the meeting was worth going to; I assured myself that it does me good to be taken out of my comfort zone and I did a lot of talking to God on the way. We try to make Christmas into a cosy festival. Yet Mary and Joseph had a difficult and uncomfortable journey; the shepherds had been shaken out of their normal routine; the Magi were not on a package holiday. The coming of God to share our humanity is an earth-shattering event – we are not to be afraid but to trust. Christmas is about recognising Christ in our midst – a time for celebration but not always a cosy time. For those who, for whatever reason, find Christmas difficult, he says “Do not be afraid, it is I”. Let us all hold on to the Jesus who comes to share our lives so that we may all have a very blessed Christmas, whatever our circumstances. Janice |