Advent and Christmas 2015: Room at the Inn
Advent and Christmas 2015: Room at the Inn
Throughout Advent Ekklesia will be opening a daily ‘window’ onto our Christmas appeal theme – ‘Room at the Inn’: how to make room in our hearts, our churches, our lives and our world for the coming of a different order. We will discover that this can happen in a variety of different ways: welcoming the stranger (the current refugee crisis), combatting stigmatism and prejudice (HIV/AIDS, mental health issues and more), preserving the habitat (global warming and climate change), working for peacemaking and peace-building (the fractured situation throughout the Middle East) and more. Each day we will offer a meditation on a verse of Scripture, and a practical action to accompany prayer and self-examination in what is a penitential – but also profoundly hopeful – season.
1 December
“There will be signs in the sun, moon and stars, and on the earth distress among the nations.” (Luke 21.25)
Our waiting for the arrival of the transformed future God promises is punctuated by suffering and anxiety – and the war and conflict it often presages. We remain vigilant, resisting the voices of those calling for war in Syria, and raise ours to demand peace to all peoples.
Today is also World Aids Day.
Action: support the churches’ work on HIV/AIDS: http://www.ekklesia.co.uk/node/21098 Work against the clamour of war: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/action/don-t-bomb-syria-action-page