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The University Hospital Coventry and Warwickshire’s (UHCW) Chaplaincy Team has won the ‘Chief Executive Award’ in the hospital’s Outstanding Service and Care Awards (OSCAs) 2020.
The team includes the United Reformed Church (URC’s) Revd Paul Holmes, who serves as Chaplain and Bereavement Services Officer.
Explaining why she made the nomination, Jackie Bell, Chaplaincy Administrator, said: “I was blown away by the care and compassion shown by the whole team.”
The Revd Dr Rosalind Selby, Principal of Northern College, a United Reformed Church Resource Centre for Learning, explores what's important about gift-giving at Christmas.
Years ago, I remember an advert on television in the run up to Christmas. The ‘storyline’ was about not leaving Christmas shopping to the last minute. The advert showed a man who stops, on the way home, at a garage that’s still open. The ‘thoughtful’ presents his wife, children, parents other relatives get were things like: hub caps, a jack, a spare tyre, a steering wheel lock and a car shampoo kit.
The Revd Dr John Bradbury, General Secretary of the United Reformed Church, compares the change in Mary and Joseph’s plan for their firstborn to the havoc wreaked by the coronavirus pandemic, and God’s presence through it all in this reflection for Christmas day.
“What has come into being in him was life, and the life was the light of all people. The light shines in the darkness, and the darkness did not overcome it”. (John 3b-5)
How are your Christmas plans faring, I wonder? How did the plans of Mary and Joseph for the birth of their firstborn fare, I wonder? Whilst our Prime Minister has locked us down, the Emperor Augustus sent everyone out on the road.
As the wait for Christmas reaches its end, Simon Peters, Project Manager for Walking the Way: Living the life of Jesus today – the United Reformed Church’s focus on lifelong, missional discipleship – considers what we have to look forward to during, what for many will be, a very strange Christmas.
“For unto us a child is born, unto us a son is given: and the government shall be upon his shoulde: and his name shall be called Wonderful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, The Prince of Peace.” Isaiah 9:6 (KJV)
