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well good morning and welcome to our family service today my name is reverend gemma and i'll be leading our service today we're thinking about light because today is a special day in the church's calendar it's often called candle mass or the presentation of christ in the temple and it tells the story of jesus being presented in the temple and about the people that he meets and what they recognize him to be and so we're going to be thinking all about light and how jesus brings light into our lives but let's begin with our opening prayers the grace of our lord jesus christ the love of god and the fellowship of the holy spirit be with you and also with you and now we have our opening prayer which has actions so we say loving god we've come to worship you help us to pray to you in faith to sing your praise with gratitude and to listen to your word with eagerness through jesus christ our lord amen and so now we can have our first song give me keep me joy give me joy in my heart i pray give me joy in my heart keep me crazy keep me praising till the break [Music] give me peace in my heart keep me loving give me peace in my heart i pray give me peace in my keep me heart till the break [Music] give me love in my heart keep me serving give me love in my heart i pray give me love in my heart [Music] see we come now to the part of our service where we say sorry to god for the things that we've done that he wouldn't want us to have done god our father we come to you in sorrow for our sins for turning away from you for ignoring your will for our lives father forgive us save us and help us for behaving just as we wish without thinking of you father forgive us save us and help us fulfilling you by what we do and think and say father forgive us save us and help us for letting ourselves be drawn away from you by temptations in the world around us father forgive us save us and help us for living as if we were ashamed to belong to your son father forgive us save us and help us we know that god always forgives when we come to him and so we say that the god of love brings you back to himself forgives you your sins and assures you of your of his eternal love through jesus christ our lord amen so now we're gonna have our special prayer for today lord jesus christ light of the nations and glory of israel make your home with us present us pure and holy to your heavenly father your god and our god amen and now we have our reading our reading today comes from luke's gospel according to the law of moses new parents had to take their first son to the temple and make a special offering to god and so that's what mary and joseph did with jesus at that time a man named simeon was living in jerusalem simeon was a good man he loved god and was waiting for god to save the people of israel god's spirit came to simeon and told him that he wouldn't die until he had seen christ the lord when mary and joseph brought jesus to the temple the spirit told simeon to go into the temple simeon took the baby jesus in his arms and praised god lord i am your servant and now i can die in peace because you have kept your promise to me with my own eyes i have seen what you have done to save the people and foreign nations will also see this your power is the light for the nations and it will bring honor to the people of israel jesus's parents were surprised at what simeon had said then he blessed them and told mary this child of yours will cause many people in israel to fall down and others to stand the child will be like a warning sign many people will reject him and you mary will suffer as though you have been stabbed by a dagger but all this will show people what they are really thinking so we've heard simeon describe jesus in our reading as the light of the world and we know that later on in the gospels jesus describes himself saying i am the light of the world that's a really important image that we're going to think about a bit more this morning now light is something really important that we quite often take for granted the first time i tried to film this service for you i was just about to get ready to do it when we had a power cut and i thought oh well i can maybe do the service anyway and lights and candles and then i realized that actually my phone battery was really low my computer wouldn't turn on and it was too dark to read the piece of paper that i'd written my notes on so you see light is really important and we take for granted that when we turn a switch light will come on but yesterday when i was sat thinking about light and lighting candles i was thinking just how important light is for us because it means that we can see everything and very few of us ever experience real real darkness normally there's some stars or the moon or a street lamp or a torch or something like that but being in the dark can be feel really scary i've got some different candles here that we're gonna like so this one's already lit let's light one of the others so this is mary and joseph and baby jesus look just as they would have been when they took him to the temple so let's light this candle and then let's like this one and so this lamp obviously this is not a candle but it does give light so let's put it on so i don't know how well you can see that you'll definitely get to see it in a bit later but it lights up like stars so light comes in different ways we can turn on the light i can turn the light on in this room there we go we can make it really bright if i went outside the sun's really shining so we could see lots of things but we take for granted having light in our lives and as i said darkness can be a bit scary and jesus comes to be the light for the world and that doesn't mean that he's the one putting electric into our homes or the light in the candle flame but you know there's something really special about lighting candles did you see when i lit this candle from the match that the match actually still had light i've got two more tea lights here i'm gonna put one here and one here so i'm going to light another candle but this time instead of using a mat i'm going to use this candle stub and i'm going to light it from this candle there we go say i like one two light and another ti and then i can put my candle stub there now you might be wondering why i'm doing that when i haven't completely lost my mind because what i'm trying to show you is that even when we share the light from these candles there's still light left when you share a bag of sweets with your friends or with your mum and dad or with somebody else if there's 10 sweets and you have to share them equally between the two of you you don't get 10 do you get five or if there was 10 of you sharing a bag of 10 sweets you'd only get one but it doesn't matter what we do to share this light there's still light to go around and if i were to do that again if i take this one and blow it out and then decide to share the light from this tea light you can see neither the tea light has got less or is this smaller than the flame before that's a really important thing when we think about jesus being the light of the world as well it doesn't matter how many people come to share in the light that jesus has there's still more than enough for each of us it never gets any less and there's one other thing that i can think about that's like this but when you share it it doesn't get any less it just gets more i wonder if you can think about what it is well it's love when you share love there just ends up being more love to go around and you might think that's cheating but it's still true and jesus's light is like love that it comes and surrounds us lifts us up makes us feel good and takes us out of dark and difficult scary places because no matter where we go or what we do jesus's love is still with us and jesus's light is still there and you know what the most lovely thing about light is is that if i had a mirror you could see this light reflected and it would bring more light into the room and we've got to be like that reflecting jesus's light in the world to light up more and more of the places that we are and the great thing is is that we reflect jesus's light into the world and so we need to look for opportunities in the world to do that to share light with people who are feeling like they're living in a dark or sad place we need to bring joy and hope and love to those who don't have it because all those things are contained in what it means for jesus to be the light of the world and it's so simple we can do it by just loving people by looking after them by reaching out when somebody might be lonely by trying to remember that we have god's light in us and so we can share it by living lives that bring light to people i wonder if you can think of three things to do in the next week that might help to bring light to the people around us well i can think of three things that i want to do i'm going to reach out to a couple of people that i think might be lonely so i'm going to give them a ring and speak to them i'm going to send a card to a friend that i haven't spoke to in ages and i'm also going to try and be happy and smiley to all my and see if they need any help so you can all do that if you're struggling to think of something to do and want to help people who might feel a bit lonely if you wanted to draw some pictures and send them to me so take a picture of them or get a grown-up to take a picture of them and email them to me i'll make sure i can share them with wild acres one of the care homes near here and those your your pictures can be used to bring some light to the residents the people who live there or maybe you even want to write a letter to them if you want to do that why don't you send it to church first with my name on it and i'll make sure that it gets to them but we can all so easily reflect and share jesus's light in the world so let's go out this week and try and make the world as bright a place as we can amen now we come to the part of our service where we affirm our faith in god do you believe and trust in god the father source of all being in life the one for whom we exist we believe and trust in him do you believe and trust in god the son who took our human nature died for us and rose again we believe and trust in him do you believe and trust in god the holy spirit he gives life to the people of god and makes christ known in the world we believe and trust in him this is the faith of the church this is our faith we believe and trust in one god father son and holy spirit amen we come now to our perez loving god who is the light of the world we bring before you all those things that are in our lives that make us feel like we are in a dark or lonely place we think of all the people who have dark and sad times in their own lives we remember how our world sometimes judges people discriminates or ignores people leaving them alone in the dark without the love of god we can too easily find that we live in darkness sometimes the world seems to be dark scary and unfriendly but god is always with us we thank god for all those people that we love we thank god for all the good things in our lives our homes our favorite things the doctors and nurses who care for those who are sick and we thank god for the knowledge of how much he loves us help us lord to shine as light in the world bring together all our prayers and the words of the prayer that jesus taught us our father who art in heaven hallowed be thy name thy kingdom come thy will be done on earth as it is in heaven give us this day our daily bread and forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us and lead us not into temptation but deliver us from evil for thine is the kingdom the power and the glory forever and ever are men and now we're gonna have our final song the spirit lives to set us free walk walk in the light he finds us all in unity walk walk in [Music] [Laughter] [Music] walk in the light of the lord jesus promised life to all walk walk in the light the dead were awakened by his call walk walk in the light [Laughter] [Music] walk in the light of the lord he died in pain uncovery walk walk in the light to save the lost like you and me walk walk in the light [Music] [Music] walk in the light of the lord we know his death was not the end walk in the light he gave his spirit to be a friend walk walk in the light oh [Music] walk in the light of the lord by jesus our words are healed walk walk in the light the father's kindness [Music] is [Music] [Music] walk in the light of the lord the spirit lives in you and me walk walk in the light his light will shine for all to see [Music] well thank you for being with us this morning do send pictures or letters or whatever you like if you would like to spread a little light to those people living in wild acres it'd be lovely if you could but otherwise go out into the world and make sure you share as much of god's light and remember that jesus came to be the light to the world and so we now come to our blessing and dismissal before we have those i just want to invite you very much to come to our family service next week so our family service instead of being pre-recorded at 9 30 is going to be live on zoom in the afternoon the details of which will all be written up on a slide after this service but do please come along and join in bring a talk cuddly toy if you'd like we'd be delighted to meet them and we'd really really love to see you and chat to you in person as it were so we're great that will be great and we love to see you and now for our blessing the lord bless you and watch over you the lord make his face to shine upon you and be gracious to you the lord look kindly upon you and give you peace and the blessing of god almighty the father the son and the holy spirit be with us all ever more amen go in peace to love and serve the lord in the name of christ amen you