{"id":417,"date":"2015-12-02T19:38:48","date_gmt":"2015-12-02T19:38:48","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.taborchurch.org.uk\/?p=417"},"modified":"2016-07-12T09:13:36","modified_gmt":"2016-07-12T09:13:36","slug":"a-christmas-message","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/?p=417","title":{"rendered":"A Christmas Message"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I expect some of you will have seen the programme on TV entitled &#8216;Hugh&#8217;s war on waste.&#8217; The River Cottage chef has been campaigning to get people to throw away less and trying to get the public and supermarkets to buy and sell vegetables that are not &#8216;perfectly shaped. If you saw the programmes you will recall the mountain of parsnips that had to be thrown away because they weren&#8217;t perfect enough for the retailer and the field of cabbages that was destroyed because the leaves didn&#8217;t meet the specifications. I am sure we would all agree that this is a terrible waste when many people in this country struggle to put food on the table.<\/p>\n<p>It will soon be Christmas when we celebrate the birth of the Christ-child who grew into a man, who ministered among and to those who were not &#8216;perfectly shaped,&#8217; holding out his hands to them and inviting them to dine with him. He ate with `tax collectors and sinners&#8217; and for not perfectly shaped humankind he died on the cross.<\/p>\n<p>We know that over 2,000 years later we are loved just as we are and we will never be rejected by God. We are held in the palm of his hand&#8230;whoever we are, whatever we do, wherever we are on life&#8217;s journey, God is with us.<\/p>\n<p>At Christmas we hear these words &#8216;A virgin will become pregnant and have a son and he will be called Immanuel&#8217; (which means &#8216;God is with us&#8217;) What a wonderful gift this Christmas time.<\/p>\n<p>I trust our Advent worship and Carol Service will be a spiritual time for us all.<\/p>\n<p>I wish you a happy, peaceful Christmas and every blessing for 2016.<\/p>\n<p>Margaret<\/p>\n<p>Trustee of Tabor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I expect some of you will have seen the programme on TV entitled &#8216;Hugh&#8217;s war on waste.&#8217; The River Cottage chef has been campaigning to get people to throw away less and trying to get the public and supermarkets to buy and sell vegetables that are not &#8216;perfectly shaped. If you saw the programmes you &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/?p=417\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">A Christmas Message<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-417","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-quarterly-messages"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=417"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":658,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/417\/revisions\/658"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.taborfreemethodist.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}