My aunt, who is ninety four on Advent Sunday (November 29th) is coming to join us at the Rectory as we celebrate Christmas and Epiphany. She will take part in most activities, but some are just too much for her.

Wanting to give presents, (even though relations and friends would not expect them), but unable to go shopping for long periods, the family suggested that together we buy some things “on line”. Unable to write all her huge number of cards by hand, I suggested that we contact some of them by email, especially those abroad. It would be new technology coming to the aid of the older generation.

Wow, hard to believe! As I am writing this, a knock at the door from special delivery: my aunt has sent me my Christmas present! She is miles ahead of me. I have not even sent her a birthday card yet: I bet she is already writing her Christmas cards. It just shows that we have so much to learn from the elderly, from their grace and love, even in infirmity.

A great deal of attention has been paid recently to care of the elderly. Reports suggest that dementia care in hospitals is not always adequate. Politicians of all persuasions are promising to improve the financial prospects for care in old age. We know it will be a growing problem.

It will also be an opportunity to show just how compassionate and resourceful our society can be. Perhaps this Christmas we can consider our own awareness of the needs of the elderly in our families, in our neighbourhood and in our church, and do something to improve their lot, even if it is only a small act of kindness.

I would also like to quote from the words of a fellow priest, Toby Marchand, with whom I agree wholeheartedly, about another group who are equally important.

“They are all people who without a murmur of complaint are giving up their time 24 hours a day, seven days a week, to look after spouses who suffer from a variety of illnesses, including Parkinson’s disease, dementia, motor-neuron disease and Alzheimer’s disease. The problem for so many of us who know about these conditions and these people is that we don’t know what we can do. It is an intensely personal situation for the couple involved and there is a real problem of outside “interference”. So we make do with the occasional kindly word, the expression of sympathy. I count myself amongst those who feel powerless and slightly guilty about the whole thing.

"I believe there are two things at least that we could do. The first is we can affirm the individual worth of those who are suffering the illnesses.

“The second thing is to affirm the value of the work that the carers do. One of the most heartbreaking human situations that anyone ever has to face is the change of character that comes about when someone we love is gradually engulfed in a condition that alters their personality.

Their partners, who become automatically and inevitably their carers, find their time is taken up completely so that they have no life that they can call their own. And yet they are expected, when they do get out, to be cheerful and stoic. In the Body of Christ there are many gifts and many forms of service.

Look at Romans 12.3-8, or Ephesians 4.7-16, or the whole of Chapter 12 of 1 Corinthians. Those who are engaged in the full-time care are no less important than those who have a more active public role in the Body of Christ (or in the community). Just because they cannot be there to share in worship every time the church meets, or take an active part in the committees and groups of the church or community, does not mean to say that God thinks any the less of them: in fact it is rather the opposite!” (Edited extracts from Toby’s Letter to St Michael’s Bishop’s Stortford).

Through our care, God’s love, born anew in our hearts, is spread abroad and his glory made manifest.

Chris Boulton