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have been asked to put in the boxes. Most of these would be considered ‘boring’ by our children, but we take the view that without the boxes, these other children would have nothing; they therefore receive such a gift with wonderful enthusiasm.

I hope that as Christmas comes round again, in spite of the costs involved, we will continue to be as enthused ourselves about the celebrations as our poorer neighbours will be about our simple shoe boxes. We don’t after all celebrate just a time to give and receive bigger and better ‘stuff’ - we celebrate the life of Jesus, born as a baby in Bethlehem some 2000 years ago. The Bible calls His life God’s ‘priceless gift’ to us. Whatever the expectations of others, I hope that this Christmas you will be able to remember not just the simplicity of other people’s Christmas, but also the simplicity of the greatest, and most priceless gift, that was ever given at Christmas.

The Lord bless you this Christmas time

Phil

Our new hymn book, Mission Praise, has sprung a few surprises, writes John Howells. One is the inclusion of the ‘Welsh’ tune ‘Dim ond Iesu’, one which I remember singing to the words, ‘Lord, her watch Thy church is keeping.’ The tune appears in only one of my Welsh hymnbooks (Annibynol); the Baptist Times published it with Christmas words and the tune under its Welsh title.

But is it a Welsh tune? It was written by Robert Lowry (1826-1899), an American Baptist minister and professor. Sankey’s Sacred Songs and Solos contains an impressive number of his tunes, including ‘I need Thee every Hour’, ‘Low in the grave He lay’, and one which as callow teenagers, we delighted in mocking, ‘Where is my Wandering boy tonight?’

‘Dim ond Iesu’ appears here too, but under its original name of ‘Jesus Only’. Curiously, and possibly uniquely, the Welsh name appears to have superseded the English one. In addition, the rather gloomy original words have taken on a more positive and encouraging tone:

“If I’ve Jesus, Jesus only, then my sky will have a gem;

He’s the Sun of brightest splendour, and the Star of Bethlehem.”

The minister of a Florida church was asked how many people his church could sleep in the event of a hurricane. “On Sunday mornings” he replied, “we sleep about 200”