The Vicarage, Blackmore, Essex
CM4 ORN
19 - CHRISTMAS - 73
Dear Friend(s),
There is a line of a hymn which runs "Change and decay in all around I see". Change? Well, yes! But decay? Hardly, where the Parish of Blackmore is concerned. When my dear wife and I came Blackmore in 1957 it was a quiet agricultural village. Things were different then but not better. Change has come through the years and continues. Hundreds of new houses have been built. Our population has grown by over two thousand persons. The majority earn their keep in London and neighbouring Essex towns. Indeed, comparing the Blackmore of today with the Blackmore I first knew decay is the last word I'd use.
So I come to my seventeenth
Christmas Letter to be sent out from Blackmore Vicarage. It was three years ago
last March that my wife entered into that fulness of life which, in the body,
we cannot experience as we would. I know that God has provided for her and he
has provided for me. For me, with a calling that employs all my time and
faculties, and friends, both in and out of the parish, whose interest, care and
demands enrich and challenge continually. However, my greatest sense of
well-being stems from the fact that Christians here are drawing closer together
in the Lord Jesus Christ and in his service. There is a growing interest in the
study of the scriptures and the Holy Spirit has moved in the lives of many. I
wish I could extend my letter to tell of one and another who have committed
themselves to Christ as Lord and Saviour and are demonstrating the fact in
their daily lives.
To be more particular, my Lay
Reader, of whom I wrote a year ago, is proving an able colleague who preaches
acceptably and assists in many ways. Earlier in the year we started a monthly
Family Communion Service, using the new Series III Order of Service, with the
holy table in the nave and the chairs arranged on three sides. The congregation
participate in the prayers and in the reading of Scriptures. It has been good
to see young parents with their children coming to the Lord's Table. In
response to our Bishop's Call to Mission the Anglican and Baptist Churches have
combined to arrange a parish mission to be led by the Rev. Dick Rees in October
of next year. We are preparing ourselves for the Mission and a continuing
strategy of Christian Outreach. Five Parish Weekends have been planned as part
of the preparation. A fortnightly joint Bible study has also commenced. Other
parish activities mentioned in earlier letters continue.
So far I have concentrated on
local news. However, we live in a large world and we find ourselves less and
less able to confine ourselves to purely local interests. At the time of
writing, the Middle East War between Arab and Jew has given way to truce.
Christians, sensitive to the part Palestine has played in history and the part
it may yet play, if certain interpretations of prophetic Bible passages are
correct, have no doubt wondered whether the stage was set for Armageddon.
Certainly the state of world affairs is disturbing to the natural mind. The
morality and integrity of some in high and influential places leaves room for
doubt. Wealthy and powerful nations seem to tolerate local wars and find in
them a means of proving sophisticated weaponry. A spirit of anarchy is abroad
and materialism breeds selfishness. Godless socialism is as ruthless towards
its opponents as are the religious devotees who kill one another while
professing to serve the same God. Had Robert Burns lived today one wonders whether
he would have found other words to express "man's inhumanity to man".
How wonderful it is for the Christian to realize the sovereignty of God over
all the universe and not least in the affairs of men. God's own book assures
the believer "In quietness and confidence shall be your strength".
For my Christmas - New Year message I want to say something about a passage
from Genesis (16.13). It is the story of a woman in great distress. An
underdog, who, like Esau and the Prodigal's elder brother, tends to appeal to
our natural sympathy. She was a younger wife of Abraham. She was with child and
the envy of Sarah, Abraham's first and so far childless wife. God had promised
Abraham some ten years earlier the Sarah would bear him a son and heir. God's
time for the fulfilment of his promise was a quarter century later. In his
providence God sometimes proves the measure of our confidence in him by making
us wait for the fulfilment of his promises. His time for the coming of special
blessings alone is the right time. Abraham and Sarah grew impatient. The years
were passing, getting older. Let me have a son by proxy said Sarah to Abraham.
Take my maid and make her the mother of a son. So Abraham Sarah and, weakened
in faith, went ahead of his God instead waiting to be led by him.
Repercussions from his act
have distressed the Middle East through succeeding centuries. And Sarah, who
had heard God’s promise of a child through her, brought trouble of mind to
herself, to Abraham and to the whole family through giving Hagar, the Egyptian
slave, as wife to Abraham. When Ishmael, the son of Hagar, was about fifteen
years old and Sarah had borne Isaac at the age of ninety, the resentment of
Sarah forced Abraham to banish the slave wife and her son. Hagar and Ishmael
were great-extremity in the desert and like to die of thirst when God
intervened. Hagar said, "Thou, God, seest me". At a time when it
seemed she was all alone and none at hand to help, she came to know that God
was there, at work in her life. His eye was on her and Ishmael her son. It must
have been in Abraham's household that Ishmael had learned to call to God for
help and God, who distress, also heard Ishmael's cry. The seeing God, who became
so real to Hagar that day, looked with pity and compassion on mother and son
and flew to their relief. What God did was literally to give them the water of
life freely, and they lived and prospered under the good hand of God, in spite
of the neglect of Abraham and the bitterness of Sarah.
In this world it is the lot of
men and women, and young people too, to feel desperately alone at times, when
it seems that nobody knows, understands or cares. All too often this is sadly true
where our fellow humans are concerned but it is never true of God our Maker. As
Hagar discovered, He sees, His eye is over all the earth. It matters not who or
what we are the eye of God is upon us.
This is a sobering thought.
God sees what is commendable and what is not and what is so wonderful is that
he never writes us off. The divine eye that looks on all my resistance to the
will of God, my folly and stupidity, sees also the potential for godliness
(god-like-ness) if I am willing to drink of the water of life freely.
Perhaps 1974 will bring you
times of loneliness, times when you feel unable to cope. Or times when things
go so well that you may be in danger of growing careless of your spiritual
needs. In either case and at all times remember Hagar and say as she said
"Thou God seest me". Such realization will be balm to your soul. To
know that God, your Heavenly Father, sees, cares and will be your supply.
In sending my good wishes for
Christmas and the New Year, I commit you to the grace, mercy and peace of Him
who is perfectly revealed in his Son, Jesus Christ our Lord.
MONTAGUE H. KNOTT.
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