Advent 1955

The Advent wind begins to stir
With sea-like sounds in our Scotch fir,
It's dark at breakfast, dark at tea,
And in between we only see
Clouds hurrying across the sky
And rain-wet roads the wind blows dry
And branches bending to the gale
Against great skies all silver pale
The world seems travelling into space,
And travelling at a faster pace
Than in the leisured summer weather
When we and it sit out together,
For now we feel the world spin round
On some momentous journey bound -
Journey to what? to whom? to where?
The Advent bells call out 'Prepare,
Your world is journeying to the birth
Of God made Man for us on earth.'

And how, in fact, do we prepare
The great day that waits us there -
For the twenty-fifth day of December,
The birth of Christ? For some it means
An interchange of hunting scenes
On coloured cards, And I remember
Last year I sent out twenty yards,
Laid end to end, of Christmas cards
To people that I scarcely know -
They'd sent a card to me, and so
I had to send one back. Oh dear!
Is this a form of Christmas cheer?
Or is it, which is less surprising,
My pride gone in for advertising?
The only cards that really count
Are that extremely small amount
From real friends who keep in touch
And are not rich but love us much
Some ways indeed are very odd
By which we hail the birth of God.

We raise the price of things in shops,
We give plain boxes fancy tops
And lines which traders cannot sell
Thus parcell'd go extremely well
We dole out bribes we call a present
To those to whom we must be pleasant
For business reasons. Our defence is
These bribes are charged against expenses
And bring relief in Income Tax
Enough of these unworthy cracks!
'The time draws near the birth of Christ'.
A present that cannot be priced
Given two thousand years ago
Yet if God had not given so
He still would be a distant stranger
And not the Baby in the manger.

John Betjeman

Advent 1

Almighty God,
As your kingdom dawns,
turn us from the darkness of sin to the light of holiness,
that we may be ready to meet you
in our Lord and Saviour, Jesus Christ

Today is the First Sunday in Advent, the start of the Christian year.

I told you there was a reason why I hadn't blogged!

As some of you may know (or not as I haven't got around to telling you!), at the start of November I started work as the Bible Tutor at the ADC office in Watford. My task is to mark all the bible courses (paper and online) and to then process them.

However after two weeks, on the 16th November this happened!













This was the view the next morning
















The ADC was in the bit on the left. Structurally it is the least damaged part of the building and apart from smoke and some water damage we're not too badly affected...

except we are now homeless.

Last week I marked courses from home, this week we are using a room in the Stanborough Church and hopefully we'll have a home soon as its quite hard to operate without access to the net, our printer, stocks, telephone, etc!

So as I said before, normal service will be resumed... but it might take a while!

(more pictures can be found here)

Normal Service Will Be Resumed Shortly...

Sorry guys...

I was going to blog earlier but I got a little busy getting the hang of the new job. So after 2 weeks I thought I would blog again, however something came up (see the next post) which has put things on hold (removed my access to the net, etc...)

Soon I Will be back!

I'll be back

No seriously, I will!

I'm still alive and have just started a new job and have access to the net reguarly again so I'll be back soon!