It may be almost forty years since my mother died but I can still hear her ranting on about the iniquities of frozen vegetables. If frozen was suspicious, canned was sinister and dried bordering on the demonic. She was wrong of course, but against the background of growing up with some appalling apologies for fruit and vegetables in the second world war and living with the privilege of a large farmhouse kitchen garden, mother was biased.
Nowadays we enjoy a balance of fruit and vegetables in all four states and each has its proper place in our diet. Leeks fresh (for example), peas frozen, baked beans canned and sultanas dried – that is how it is.
We have entered in to Advent again. Time for a new message, delivered in a fresh way with excitement in a harsh environment.
Advent thinking needs to be a mixture of the fresh and the preserved. Isaiah’s ancient message must be served up alongside new interpretations of the incarnate Christ for a world where war, financial hardship and daily grind run alongside the praises of Jesus, the same yesterday, today and forever and ‘new every morning’.
However we approach the prophesies of a Messiah we should be ready for breath-taking surprises and stunningly relevant interpretations of a word that was first delivered hundreds of years before Christ was born but which still has meaning two thousand years after he died, and rose again.
Today’s set hymn, number 649 in Singing the Faith, is Basil Bridge’s ‘O God of hope, your prophets spoke’. Do read it all and pray through it at your leisure, but here is the second verse, especially apposite at the moment.
We pray that our divided world
may hear their words anew:
then lift for good the curse of war,
let bread with justice bless the poor,
and turn in hope to you,
and turn in hope to you.
A Prayer
God of history and eternity, this Advent help us to understand the newness of your message for us, nestling within the surrounds of ancient truths. May we revel in the familiar while we are excited by the fresh; and may we know what to preserve for time to come. Amen.