‘As community nursing staff we are often a forgotten workforce. It is really nice to know that we are being thought of. These gifts mean a lot to us and come at a time when we are all physically and emotionally exhausted. It has given us all a real boost.’

- Julie, Sirona Healthcare, recipients of 500 bags of kindness

What a week it’s been - we’ve packed and delivered over 1000 gifts to people all across the city. Here are some of the stories of transformation that we’ve been hearing…

‘I just wanted to send a huge thank you to everyone that kindly donated gifts for our team. As community nursing staff we are often a forgotten workforce. It is really nice to know that we are being thought of. These gifts mean a lot to us and come at a time when we are all physically and emotionally exhausted. It has given us all a real boost. Thank you again.’

This message came from Julie, the manager of one of the teams of community nurses, after Liz and Judith delivered a van-load of bags of kindness to her team this week. In the end, we delivered over 500 of the bags to healthcare assistants in Bristol, what an opportunity, to reach out and bless a workforce so often overlooked, who’ve often been on the front line, caring for people throughout the pandemic.

James has been delivering to schools this week. From Stokes Croft to Ashley Down, teachers and families have been quietly blown away by the bags and boxes of Christmas supplies and fancy hampers being unloaded at the gates. ‘We’d always planned on giving away boxes of supplies to struggling families, but when we raised more money than we’d expected I had a conversation with someone in one of our Little Churches about the teachers who he works with and what a tough year they’ve had, and thought why not bless them as well? They knew we’d be delivering the boxes for families but the M&S hamper that turned up in every staff room was a total surprise.’

Shelley, a headteacher, wrote to us to say ‘I am sure you are aware what a tough year it has been for school staff and [the hamper] has brought a smile to a lot of people today. We have said to staff to take what they need to make their Christmas special.’

Elsewhere we’ve delivered Christmas boxes to families who we support throughout the year. Wendy delivered a box of Christmas goodies to one Mum on Sunday who wrote to say ‘I even had a little tear opening the Christmas box of treats, beautiful candle and hand creams, I’m overwhelmed by your kindness and generosity’.

As part of last year’s Love Christmas, each family who received a box also got an invitation saying to get in touch if they needed ongoing support, 20 families responded and now receive deliveries every other week.

One single Mum we’ve been delivering to all year has always been quite nervous when we showed up at the door each week. But gradually over the year she’s opened up and this last weekend Megan was invited in for a chat and there was an opportunity to pray, and to invite her to come and join in with one of our Carol Services.

We’ve also been getting to know a family of Syrian refugees this last year. The Father died in the civil war and the rest of the family fled the country; now the mother and children are making a life in the UK, studying and working and we get to bring them a box of food every other week just to make things that bit easier. Last week we got to pray with them.

Invitations to get in touch have once again gone inside each of the boxes for families and we’re praying for more such responses, more opportunities to give more regularly. Because this is where the deep work happens, the beginnings of life changing friendships - for both sides of the box. We have one family at Families of Hope who get on so well with the family they deliver to that they’re planning to share a meal together.

We love hearing these stories of hope and God touching people’s lives, the opportunities to speak His name, to pray. But if we’re honest most of the bags and boxes this year are going to people that we will never meet, households where we won’t get to cross the threshold and there’s a place for that too. Because radical generosity can’t always be about outcomes, it has to be about faith, sowing seeds and saying yes to God.

And if you speak to James or Judith or Megan or any of the team involved it’s been a journey of faith all the way through. Faith in the big things and the small things. In the small, when we ran of boxes of biscuits on the Saturday morning before the Big Pack. 2 minutes later someone unexpected walked through the door with 10 boxes of biscuits. In the big, when we were spending money before we knew how much we’d raised (you might think unwisely but we did raise £5000 more than we’d planned to!). We also didn’t know that we’d be able to pack 1100 bags in an hour on Sunday. But we did it together and that’s been the other big learning - that not only do we let go of any expectation on any ‘outcomes’, but we lean in to what God is doing in us - we are the outcome, we are the transformed body of Christ, learning to live generously.

The Big Pack last Sunday was alive with everyone leaning in to play their part. From the team who diligently hand-wrote Christmas cards, to the guys who took it upon themselves to sort out all the leftover cardboard, to senior members of our church family like Thelma, who told us she wasn’t even planning on coming but was so pleased that she did. Everyone was involved and everyone was blessed beyond measure in the giving.

In our packing parties too we saw people stepping up to give and play their part: our Beyond The Gate Little Church had a packing party to pack gifts for another hub of ex-offenders. One of our regulars turned up with a shopping bag full of supplies he’d brought to give away as his offering. He didn’t know he’d be receiving a box of gifts, packed by someone else, later in the week. He just packed and gave away, more than he had, no questions asked.

It’s amazing when everyone in the body is playing their part like that, it feels so healthy to be giving away, so far from the passive group of consumers the church in the West is so in danger of being. Following Jesus together is learning to give like he gave.

So thank you, everyone, for leaning into this with us. For following Jesus down the road of generosity this Christmas, even if only he knows what it cost you. Thank you for letting yourself be reminded once again that it’s more blessed to give than to receive, whether we receive a thank you note or whether we never hear the end of the story. But most of all we want to say thank you to the giver, to the God who held nothing back, who gave his son as a gift for everyone so that no one would be left out. As the psalmist says in Psalm 115 ‘Not to us, Lord, not to us but to your name be the glory, because of your love and faithfulness.’ Amen.

Merry Christmas everyone and see you at Carols on Sunday!

A look back over Love Christmas