We’ll be singing a great deal about the little town of Bethlehem and Royal David’s city, Jerusalem, over the next few weeks. But it comes with questions this year - questions of the rights and wrongs of the war in the Holy land and where God is in it all. In the Old Testament, we read how God chose a tribe, the Israelites, to show us what it’s like to be God’s special and loved people. Then he sent Jesus to enable everyone of us to have that same special relationship with Him - as Paul put it in Galatians 3: 26&28: ‘So in Christ Jesus you are all children of God through faith...There is neither Jew nor Gentile, neither slave nor free, nor is there male and female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus.’ And so it seems to me that, though ethnic identity may be rooted in place, it is no longer dependent on it (as anyone living away from their place of their birth can bear witness). Instead, the first and greatest command is to ‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind....and the second is like it:` Love your neighbour as yourself.’” And so as we sing of the place of Jesus’ birth, let’s pray for peace there.
Songwriter Andy Flannagan penned a new verse to the hymn
O come, O come Emmanuel - thanks Ian for sharing it:
‘O come, O come, thou harbinger of peace
To Israel’s plains and Gaza’s streets
Melt swords there into ploughshares again
Then reconcile these residents in pain.’
Read the rest of the newsletter here.
