We held our Christingle Service at St John’s Itchen Abbas this evening.

It’s a great annual event for the children of the parish.  We started off the talk by asking the children whether they have ever walked outside in the dark without a torch; had they run outside in the dark without a torch – why would that be a really foolish thing to do?  Eventually, the children identified that if they ran outside in the dark they could get hurt and get lost.

Then we looked at the painting of Jesus the Light of the world by Holman Hunt and talked about how Jesus was light of the world and how Jesus knocks on the door of our lives but we have to open the door from the inside.

We then looked at a lighthouse and noticed how it is settled on the rock and that sailors look at the light rather than the waves when there is a storm.

Likewise we should look at Jesus rather than our problems when our lives are beset by storms.

Then we described the Christingle itself and the meaning of the orange, the ribbon, the sticks and the sweets and finally the candle itself.

Thank you to the wonderful people who put together our Christingles and organised everything for this evenings service.

Alex Pease