Worship

We’re no longer in the ‘Christmas’ season, but this carol is a great song of worship. Let’s sing it with joy, as we lift our ‘hopes and fears’ to our awesome God.

O little town of Bethlehem, how still we see thee lie!
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by;
Yet in thy dark streets shineth the everlasting Light.
The hopes and fears of all the years are met in thee tonight.

O morning stars, together proclaim the holy birth,
And praises sing to God the King, and peace to all on earth!
For Christ is born of Mary and, gathered all above
While mortals sleep, the angels keep their watch of wond’ring love.

How silently, how silently the wondrous gift is giv’n!
So God imparts to human hearts the blessings of his heav’n.
No ear may hear his coming, but in this world of sin,
Where meek souls will receive him, still the dear Christ enters in.

Sermon on the Mat: Waiting for what will certainly happen

This poem was found in a concentration camp in Cologne, after the end of world war two:

I believe in the sun even when it is not shining
And I believe in love, even when there’s no one there.
And I believe in God, even when he is silent.

It reminds me of the verse in Hebrews 11: ‘Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see.’

There are times when we are very aware of God’s love and presence around us. Other times he feels far away. That’s when we rely on our faith. The faith that tells us that God is real and he sees and knows us and is working for us, even if we don’t see or feel that ourselves. It doesn’t take faith to walk on solid rock, but it takes faith to trust God when we can only see the effects of his work, and not God himself. Hebrews calls this ‘confidence in what … we do not see’.

The songwriter Matt Redman put it like this:

Blessed be Your name
When the sun’s shining down on me
When the world’s ‘all as it should be’
Blessed be Your name.

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there’s pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name.

The song asserts the truth that God is unchanging. He is still worthy of our praise, even when our situation is not as we would like. God is still merciful, even in times of pain. Whatever the world throws at us, Jesus is still Immanuel, ‘God with us’. He took the appearance of a man, ‘moved into the neighbourhood’ as the Message version of John 1:14 puts it. Even in our deepest struggles, God is there, supporting and strengthening us.

That doesn’t mean we don’t cry out for things to change. Knowing that God is with us doesn’t mean we surrender to our circumstances and don’t pray for an end to pain and suffering and injustice. It just means we don’t need to despair. Because God hears and knows and will act.

I love the imagery of Psalm 130, verse 5-6.

I wait for the Lord,
my whole being waits, and in his word I put my hope.
I wait for the Lord more than watchmen wait for the morning,
more than watchmen wait for the morning.

The image of watchmen waiting is powerful. The watchmen have been on duty all night. They are tired; their feet hurt, their arms are heavy and their eyes itch. They are desperate for morning. This is not an idle waiting, like clock-watching until your favourite TV programme starts. This is a bone-aching desperate need for the sun to rise.

But it’s also a pertinent image because the watchmen are waiting for something that will definitely happen. Morning will come. It may seem a long time in coming. Those last hours of darkness may drag in their bleak, black coldness. But they will not last forever. And we know that to be true.

Whatever we are waiting for God to do, we wait knowing, trusting, that he will act. Confident in our ever-loving, ever-powerful God.

One of my favourite recent songs is Do it again, by Elevation Worship. It starts:

Walking around these walls
I thought by now they’d fall
But You have never failed me yet.

We know God is there for us. We know we are not alone, however much time we may be spending on our own at the minute. We know God has all this in his hands, however confusing and scary and uncertain things seem to us. We long for it to end, as watchmen long for morning. And like the night does end, we know that this too will pass. In God’s time, in his way. That is our certain hope.

Prayer (from Do it again)

I know the night won’t last
Your Word will come to pass
My heart will sing Your praise again
Jesus, You’re still enough
Keep me within Your love
My heart will sing Your praise again.
Your promise still stands
Great is Your faithfulness,
I’m still in Your hands
This is my confidence: You’ve never failed me yet.

Please pray for –

• The mental health of children and young people home learning again, of parents juggling work and childcare, of health workers exhausted and dispirited, of the lonely and isolated.
• For John and family and others who have or are recovering from Covid.