Throughout Advent and Christmas we will be posting prayers from around the Synod, Ministers and Support Team, reflecting on the season and world events.
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