Make Room at the Inn this Christmas
Make Room at the Inn this Christmas
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.
“After this I looked, and lo, in heaven an open door! And the first voice, which I had heard speaking to me like a trumpet, said, ‘Come here, and I will show you what must take place after this’.” (Revelation 4. 1)
Advent offers a glimpse of a transformed future for those living at the edge. At this time we pray for those who are far from that transformation. The people on our streets who have no roof over their heads. The refugees fleeing terror and bombs looking for a place to stay. Today we pray that our politicians step back from the brink of war, to make a choice for peace and a future that transforms the lives of the peoples of Syria and Iraq.
Action: Bloomsbury Baptist Church’s winter homelessness shelter is run by C4WS, and they host them one night per week: http://www.c4wshomelessproject.org/
Work against the clamour of war: http://www.stopwar.org.uk/index.php/action/don-t-bomb-syria-action-page