Holy Night

Last winter, lying on a camp bed at St Mary’s Church trying to sleep, I was struck by the thought that I was in a holy place. Not just because I was in a church with such a legacy of worship and witness but because I was volunteering at the Winter Shelter.

On the other side of the partition, men and women were also in bed for the night. Inside not outside. Dry not wet. Warm not cold. Fed not hungry.

St James writes in his letter “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” James 1:27

This is what true religion is: care for the most vulnerable.

The Winter Shelter is a holy place – a sanctuary for those who in desperate need. Watford’s Winter Shelter re-opens on 1 December at One YMCA with funding from Watford Borough Council. The shelter will run until the morning of 1 April and, once again, volunteers from across Watford will be giving up their time to help run this life-saving accommodation.

Now imagine another group seeking shelter; this time, a young heavily pregnant woman and her husband.

To the casual onlooker, they appear a normal, although vulnerable, family.

But we know that this family are a holy family and it’s a holy night.

The mystery of God himself becoming human. Oftentimes holiness is not what or where we expect. It is found in the feeding trough in a stable. It is there in Watford’s Winter Shelter. It is found in the day-to-day (and night-to-night) routine work of New Hope. Work that is often out-of-sight but of deep, eternal significance.

Please thank God for the Winter Shelter and pray for all those who will be working, volunteering and sleeping there.