Message from the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (PaCET) for Sunday Meeting 29th December 2024

Dear Friends,

Home

Many Friends have said that finding Quakers, sometimes later in life, is like coming home. A sense of home and belonging is essential for our wellbeing, especially, it seems, at Christmas, when homes are decorated, and families and friends gather to celebrate.

But Jesus wasn’t born at home. His mother, nine months pregnant, travelled from Nazareth to Bethlehem and gave birth in a stable – possibly a cave where animals could shelter from the cold. And Matthew tells us that the family then had to flee into Egypt because of the threat of violence.

Christmas festivities are cancelled again this year in Palestine as Bethlehem is besieged, and millions of people in Gaza and elsewhere are cold, hungry and homeless.

What is our responsibility? What can we do to make God’s love more real?

Quakers have always had a concern for justice and the relief of suffering. Guided by Britain Yearly Meeting, which has a section working on Palestine and Israel, we can heed the call for advocacy and relief, in the hope that tomorrow’s mothers in the Holy Land will be able to give birth in warm and pleasant circumstances, and families will be safe at home.

A version of Silent Night, sung in Arabic and then in English by children at the Friends School in Ramallah, Palestine, has just reached me:

Quiet skies, calm and clear,/ Love and hope conquer fear,
End the war in Gaza’s night!/ Let the children see the light!
Every child deserves to be/ Safe at home and free.

Patricia Cockrell
on behalf of the Pastoral Care and Eldership Team (David Hitchin, Chris Lawson, Tim Pitt-Payne, Caroline Pybus, Theresa Samms and Nancy Wall)