Throughout Advent and Christmas we will be posting prayers from around the Synod, Ministers and Support Team, reflecting on the season and world events.
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This crib scene outside Taunton URC was produced by a friend of mine who is both a retired Anglican priest and a creative artist, Revd Norman Steel.
It began life as a life -drawing of a young couple: Norman was struck by how like a modern-day Mary & Joseph they looked. He then developed the idea to show a twenty-first century take on the birth of Christ in the whole stable scene.
You’ll see there is a tractor where you might except a donkey; young people take the place of the shepherds and others, with a bike, represent the magi and their camel.
There was even a ‘bolt-on’ child Jesus to place on Mary’s lap on Christmas Day, wearing not swaddling clothes, but a Babygro.
The whole thing helps people to reflect on the very ordinary nature of Jesus’ birth – the reality of a real-life, flesh-and-blood baby and the mystery of the truth that this baby was also God, made flesh to save us.
Revd Ruth Whitehead
Minister, Landsker Pastorate