More About Our Christmas Charities

Charity, Christmas

Every year, we choose charities that we can support at Christmas through collections made in our special services.  This year, we have chosen The Salvation Army as our national charity and  Crawley Open House as our local charity.
The Salvation Army work with a variety of psalvarmyeople including those in poverty or situations of domestic abuse.  They also provide support and advice to the homeless and unemployed, tackle loneliness in older people and work to trace family members who have lost touch with each other.

Crawley Open House provides local support and services for those oepnhousesuffering the effects of homelessness, unemployment, loneliness, discrimination, or other forms of social exclusion.  Visitors to their day centre can access health services, benefits and housing advice, workshops and classes as well as hot food and drinks and empathy and kindness.

Money collected will be split between these and our Parish, where there are several projects requiring our attention such as refurbishment of the St Barnabas’ Hall flooring, heating and toilets, as well as addressing water ingress to the bell tower at St Nicholas’.

From Revd. Gordon Parry

Clergy

This Sunday we contemplate the greatest Kingdom of all, God’s Kingdom on earth and in heaven.  Yet even though God – Father, Son and Holy Spirit represents a mystery not given to us to fathom in its entirety, God the Son – God made human – was sent to enable us, with all our imperfections, to seek out truth and perfection and to use this search to make better our world for all life, now and in the future.

Clues to the nature of God’s Kingdom engage us daily with their transient beauty, symbolic of a permanent, heavenly beauty to come.  We see the life-giving presence of the sun, the incomprehensible vastness of the night sky, the glorious death of autumn leaves and their spring rebirth in dancing, fluttering green.  We move to the rhythms of the days, the seasons, and the sea. We move also to the beauty of music which often accompanies important moments in our lives.  We are bound together by love which comes from God’s love for all of us, whatever our condition or status. I am often reminded of an observation quoted by the late Cardinal Hume, “‘Yes, God is always watching you.  Because he loves you he cannot take his eyes off you.’  That is a wonderful thought.  God can’t take his eyes off me.  Wherever I am and whatever I am doing, He keeps looking at me, not to catch me out, but from love.  As lovers look for each other and then gaze at each other, so it is with God.”

It is through the – very different – kingship of Christ that we are given a supreme example of how our lives can help to bring about the Kingdom of God – on earth as it is in heaven.

 

Gordon

 

Worth Parish Announces Charities for Christmas 2016

Charity, Christmas

Worth Parish are pleased to announce that the charities that will be supported through collections at our Christmas services this year are:

  • The Salvation Army (national)
  • Crawley Open House (local)
  • Our own parish

Collection money will be split equally between these charities.

Come Along to Our Prayer Group

Meetings, Season of Prayer

At St Nicholas’ Church on Wednesday 16th November at 2.30 pm, our recently-formed prayer group will be meeting and we’d love you to join in.  We simply talk about anything in the parish that might need our consideration and just pray together.  People either say what comes into their minds or stay silent, as suits them.

If you would like to join us, you will be very welcome indeed.