ANGLIA GOOD NEWS!    January 2018

“It is more blessed to give than to receive…”

Christmas is a time when we’re encouraged to help those in need, whether it’s children, the homeless or those lonely and living alone.

Even in this relatively prosperous country the reality is that children are still subject to abuse and neglect; homelessness and sleeping rough is on the increase; and many lonely and elderly people can go for days at a time without human contact.

Our Coffee Morning with Cake and Crafts Sale this year is on 6 December, in aid of FIND at the Castle Hill Community Centre on Highfield Road, Ipswich, IP1 6DG, from 10am to 12.30pm. Please come along – you can be sure of a warm welcome, and you’ll be supporting a worthy local cause!

About FIND

 

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FIND is a Suffolk based charity providing relief to the poor and homeless. It operates a food bank and provides food hampers at Christmas.It provides, free of charge, household items such as furniture, nursery equipment, nappies etc. It relies on grants of money and goods from local churches, charitable groups, public bodies and individual members of the community. For more information contact Maureen Reynel MBE (01473 833351)


Sing praise!

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Christmas carols began as pagan songs sung at the winter solstice around 22 December as people danced round stone circles.

Early Christians took over the solstice celebrations for Christmas, and composed songs about the birth of Jesus instead of pagan ones.

Perhaps the best known today is the Festival of Nine Lessons and Carols from King’s College, Cambridge, broadcast on Christmas Eve, where carols and Bible readings tell the Christmas story.

 

 

 

 

Performances of Handel’s glorious oratorio “The Messiah” are yet another enduring and much loved feature of Christmas-time.

This brings to mind an amazing fund-raising effort more than 250 years ago for The Foundling Hospital,                                                                                                                         the brain child of an eighteenth century sea captain, Thomas Coram.


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The Foundling Hospital 

Shocked by the sight of babies and small children left to die in the squalid streets of London, Captain Coram resolved to set up a foundling hospital for children and orphans who could not be properly cared for. It took seventeen years to win the support of wealthy patrons, until finally in 1739 a royal charter was obtained.

Handel gave a fund-raising concert in the Hospital chapel, performing a specially composed work, the Foundling Hospital Anthem, which included the famous "Hallelujah" chorus from his new oratorio “Messiah.”

He became a governor of the Hospital and from 1750 onwards gave annual fund-raising performances of the full oratorio which made a major contribution to the Hospital.


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Coram’s Fields

Today, a short walk from Great Ormond Street Hospital in central London takes you to the Foundling Museum and a small park – Coram’s Fields – with unusual entry conditions:

“no adults unless accompanied by a child.” Not a very inspiring name, certainly, but Coram’s Fields is a unique seven acre playground and park for children and young people living in or visiting London – a fitting memorial to the indefatigable Captain Coram, and his most famous fund-raiser, George Frederick Handel.

 

The Greatest Gift of all!

Christmas is a time for giving and receiving gifts too. It’s fitting therefore that we should remember the greatest gift of all – the fact that God gave His only begotten Son to give us the hope of everlasting life:  “For God so loved the world that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him should not perish but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

Let us not forget either the unflinching obedience of Jesus to His Father’s will:  “…in due time Christ died for the ungodly. For scarcely for a righteous man will one die; yet perhaps for a good man someone would even dare to die. But God demonstrates His own love toward us in that while we were yet sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans 5:6-8)

                                                                                                                      --oOo--