Text Box: What a year this has been in the history of Bethany! Under the Bethany 200 banner in each Messenger this year, there has been a list of all that has been going on as part of our bicentenary celebrations. Thanks to an exciting and very imaginative programme of events, we have celebrated in style. We have had immense amounts of fun, and there have been times when we have been able to contemplate in depth just what Bethany and the church family is here for. As a church family, and as a community, we are hugely grateful to those who had the ideas, organised the events and cajoled and persuaded us all to participate. Our thanks to them is boundless. Bethany exists to demonstrate in witness and in practical ways just what Christian love is all about, and the focus of that activity is the community in which Bethany is situated—not only the physical, bricks-and-mortar community of those who live near the big purple church, but those who share an interest in what we do and who we are. We hope that you have enjoyed our special year as much as we have. We shall continue to reach out in love and prayer to all of this community in the next years of our existence as a church family. Will you help us? Bethany 200

The following words are a very small extract from the valedictory address given by Fr. Mark Greenaway-Robbins on his departure from All Saints to work in Canada. We haven’t the space to reproduce the whole address, but these thoughts seem to be particularly appropriate for the time of year. The Wise men who came to worship the babe in the manger were of different races, but shared a common reverence for the Christ child. While they were rich and affluent, they were not ashamed to visit a shabby stable to offer their gifts.

“Reports have come to me of tribalism among our brothers and sisters in Christ!  What is this I hear concerning your faith? Some say, ‘I am Welsh’, others say, ‘I am English’, it is even said, ‘I am Cornish’. Did not Christ die once and for all? Is salvation now proclaimed through our blood relations? God’s own land is where God’s will is done.

… There is neither Welsh nor English in Christ. Your life is hidden with Christ in God. If you are Christ’s as you claim to be – you have no identity in your tribe. If you seek your identity in your tribe, you have no life in Christ! Is the sacrifice of Christ in vain? By no means. Boast in nothing but our Lord Jesus