Letter from Jon, September 2024 

The Word became flesh and made his dwelling among us.

John 1:14

Dear Friends

At the beginning of this school term I got involved, one morning a week, in St Leonard's Primary School Breakfast Club, which operates each week day in term time providing a free breakfast for children before school starts.  There are around 15 children each morning of all ages, most of them fairly regular, and I absolutely love doing it.  The children come in around 8.30am, put (or often fling) their bags and coats down at the side of the hall and then sit down at one of the tables where breakfast (in the form of toast, bagels, cereals, fruit and fruit juice – and Nutella pancakes on Fridays!) is served to them by us volunteers.

 As volunteers our job is to ask them what they would like and then to prepare and deliver it to them.  It would be easy to shout over to them and ask them for their order, or to stand over them with a notepad, but I quickly realised that the best way of engaging with them is to go over and sit across the table from them, make eye contact, ask them how they are doing and what they would like for breakfast.  When they come into the room they are, just like us adults, all in different places: tired, distracted, anxious, bored, angry, excited etc.  It is lovely though, when you sit across from them at their eye level and give them time, to see their faces change.  

As I was considering this in light of our Sunday series asking the question 'who is this Jesus?', and particularly in light of Stan's message on the incarnation (ie Jesus coming in the flesh as a human) I realised that this is exactly what our God has done for us.  When Jesus became one of us God effectively got down beside us, as one of us, at our eye level.  He is not a God who shouts from afar or stands over us with a clipboard.  He is the God who became one of us.  I love the way we see so often in the Gospels how Jesus comes alongside the broken, the sick, the downcast and the outcast and he asks them what they want.  In so doing He is saying that they are not forgotten or ignored but that they are loved and valued by God himself.  He did that 2000yrs ago when he walked this earth and he is doing it today. 

Perhaps it would be helpful for you to take time, to sit down with God and to hear him ask 'How are you?' and 'What do you want?'  What would be your response to him?  Or perhaps you have the opportunity to reflect Jesus to someone else today with those same questions.  The truth is that we are not shouting our prayers to a distant God but we are invited to take a place at the table with him and to invite others to join us.

You are dearly loved

Jon