The Church of Christ the Cornerstone

Baptist Union / Church of England / Methodist Church / Roman Catholic Church / United Reformed Church

Author: Robin.Kyd

Prayer of the Week

A Christmas Prayer 25 December 2025

Almighty God, who on this day broke into our world as a child in Bethlehem,
grant that the light which dawned in that stable may shine ever more brightly in our hearts
and in all the world.
As we have beheld your glory in the face of the infant Jesus, strengthen our hope in his promised return,
when every knee shall bow and every tongue confess that he is Lord.
Until that day, make us faithful witnesses of your Kingdom,
living as people of hope who know that the One who came will surely come again.
Amen

Prayer of the Week

Prayer for Christmas

Almighty God, you have given your only Son to take our nature upon him and to be born of a virgin:
Grant that we, who have been born again and made your children by adoption and grace,
may daily be renewed by your Holy Spirit; through Jesus Christ our Lord,
to whom with you and the same Spirit be honour and glory, now and for ever.
Amen

Prayer of the Week

Prayer of the Week 21 December 2025

Almighty God, you spoke through prophets and fulfilled your word through the birth of your Son.
As we await the celebration of his coming, stir in us the faith of Joseph,
who trusted Your promises even when they defied understanding.
Help us to recognize Your presence in unexpected places and to welcome Emmanuel, God with us,
into every corner of our lives.
Through Jesus Christ our Lord, who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God,
now and for ever.
Amen

News

Christmas 2025 at the Church of Christ the Cornerstone

Join us for a real
Christmas Celebration
at the
Church of Christ the Cornerstone

Christmas Eve
9.00 pm – Catholic Vigil Mass of Christmas
11.00 pm – Christmas Eve Holy Communion

Christmas Morning
11.00 am – Family Worship with Holy Communion

There’s something for everyone this Christmas Season
Click on the heading to see the full details.

Reflections

Sermon for Sunday, 14 December 2025: Advent 3

‘Faith for the Feeble, the Weak and the Fearful’ Sermon for Advent 3 Sunday, 14 December 2025 by Revd Geoffrey Clarke, Moderator of URC East Midlands Synod.
Click on the title above for the full text of the Sermon.

Prayer of the Week

Prayer of the Week 14 December 2025

Eternal God, you sent John the Baptist to prepare the way for the coming of your Son.
Grant us the wisdom to see your purpose and openness to hear your will,
that we too may prepare the way for Christ who is coming in power and glory
to establish his kingdom of peace and justice; through Jesus Christ our Judge and our Redeemer,
who lives and reigns with you and the Holy Spirit, one God, for ever.
Amen

Prayer of the Week

Prayer of the Week 7 December 2025

God of all hope and expectation,
as we journey through this season of Advent, teach us the discipline of waiting.
When the world rushes past, slow our hearts to watch and listen for your coming.
When despair threatens to overwhelm, remind us of your promises that never fail.
Grant us the courage of John the Baptist to speak truth and call others to repentance.
Give us eyes to see the tender shoot growing from Jesse’s stump,
even when the world looks like a barren wilderness,
for we ask in the name of Who was, and is, and is to come.
Amen

Reflections

Reflections for Advent Carol Service, 30 November 2025

Active Hope in the Darkness
By Revd George Mwaura

We gather on this First Sunday of Advent, not to escape the darkness, but to name it, and to proclaim that our waiting is not a passive resignation, but purposeful resistance. The world laments. Wars rage in Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan. Hunger stalks its victims in Gaza, Afghanistan, Yemen and the Horn of Africa. Climate catastrophe displaces millions as we have witnessed this week in Indonesia and other south-east Asia countries. The darkness is not metaphorical; it is the cold reality of children sleeping in rubble, of mothers watching their infants starve, of entire peoples erased from their lands. And into this darkness, Advent whispers: Wait.

But this is not the waiting of helplessness. The Hebrew prophets knew no such passivity. Isaiah’s vision of swords beaten into ploughshares was not wishful thinking, it was a revolutionary manifesto. When he cried, ‘Prepare the way of the Lord,’ he was calling for an active preparation: straightening the crooked systems, levelling the mountains of injustice, filling the valleys of inequality. Understand this: Christian hope, properly understood, is not optimism. Oh, no! Optimism is the privilege of those insulated from suffering. Hope, on the other hand, is something far more dangerous: it is the defiant conviction that darkness does not have the final word, coupled with the willingness to act as if the Kingdom were already breaking in.

Jürgen Moltmann taught us that Christian hope is not about the future as mere tomorrow, but about God’s future invading our present. We wait in darkness, yes, but we wait as light-bearers. We do not idle in despair; we labour in anticipation. This Advent, our hope must be embodied: in advocacy for the displaced, in solidarity with the suffering, in resistance to the powers that profit from war and environmental destruction. We light candles therefore, not to prettify the darkness, but to defy it! To say that even the smallest flame is an act of theological rebellion.

The Incarnation we await is God’s descent not into gilded comfort, but into the raw heart of crisis. Jesus was born in a stable, in a country under occupation, and threatened by imperial violence from his first breath. As you can see, our hope is in a God who does not transcend suffering but transforms it from within. So, we wait. But we wait awake – eyes open to injustice, hands extended in mercy, voices raised in prophetic witness. We wait as those who know the end of the story and therefore cannot be silent in the middle chapters. Today we proclaim, come, Lord Jesus. And until you do, make us your coming.

Amen!