Dear Highly Appreciated NG Welfare personnel
Shortly before Christmas most of us feel as if we are leaving behind a very dark year behind us. As you indeed know, we live in a very dark country. Perhaps it was for you, as Elisabeth Eybers says, a time of evening twilight, the stifle plant, that consumes each fragile plant. But so it also was on the first Christmas.
Isaiah predicted: The people that live in darkness saw a huge light. It is also true for Christmas 2016.
Jesus has entered our darkness. He was God’s self-sown sunflower who was, in spite of the darkness, ultra equipped with absolute yellow. Face to face He gazed at God’ sun, on our behalf, one-day lilies in the desert. And although he was vulnerably delivered on that dark Friday (like many of NG Welfare’s clients you helped this year), He was God’s sunflower from Bethlehem.
On the Third day he sprouted and turned to the sun like a flower – Started flowering on our behalf where He is planted.
I believe that we can also flower the Christmas where we are planted. We may again turn our flowers to God’s sun afresh, we the self-sown sunflowers from Bethlehem. Come let us sow ourselves anew in God’s garden.
Come let us again sow our talents and our thanks – although it is with tears – in God’s harvesting field.
See in your mind how we once again can turn our sunflower heads to God’s sun.
Also in the new year ahead. Because some day we will be able to reap the harvest – the sheaves that bring in joy.
From our Head Office I pray that you will have a blessed Christmas and a Sunshine 2-17. I do it knowing that all our members of staff had sown themselves fully this year to bring hope and to tough hearts.
As a flower turns its head to the sun;
As rivers fun to the sea;
As a tree reaches to heaven;
As a mountain is a refuge with God;
As sheep follow behind their shepherd –
So we turn our heart to the Lord.
Turn your heart up high:
to the risen Christ!
Blessings.
Rev Nico van Rensburg
Managing Director