
A Message of Hope and Joy!
If you’ve found your way to this page, you’ve probably seen or heard of the knitted and crocheted angels in Weardale. These 552 angels have been created by members of our churches and community and hung up throughout the Dale; from Cowshill to Wolsingham to bring you this message of Hope and Joy this Christmas!
The angels in the Christmas story announced the birth of Jesus to the shepherds on the hillside, bringing tidings of great joy which shall be for all people (Luke 2:10) and the knitted angels of Weardale bring this same message. A message of ‘Hope and Joy’ to the people of Weardale.
In one way or another this year has been a difficult one for us all, with coronavirus affecting our lives in different ways, and the restrictions that have been placed upon us. Christmas this year will be a very different one! But, in the book of Isaiah, in the Bible, we read:
The people who walked in darkness have seen a great light;
those who lived in a land of deep darkness - on them light has shined.
Isaiah 9:2 (NRSV)



The light that Isaiah is talking about is of a day when hope comes, and life lived is not one of darkness and despair, but of light and hope. That day came when God entered this world - and embodied the light that Isaiah spoke about. Though God came to us in the most unlikely way - as a vulnerable babe, found in a feeding trough, in the muck and stench of an animal barn, in an insignificant town.
But we are still in ‘darkness’ I hear you say!
We are told that God came into the darkness - though we are not told that the darkness disappeared, but that the light shone in that darkness.

These knitted angels are a way of shining some of that light in the darkness. To put a smile on someone’s face who finds them, to bring some hope and joy – to remind us that God is with us in the good times and the bad.

Like the shepherds who were attentive to what was going on around them, and came to worship Jesus the Christ child on that first Christmas day, let us notice God this Christmas and in the year ahead. Let us hold onto the golden strands of hope, as we wrestle with life and coronavirus, and look for glimpses of ‘God with Us’ as we celebrate the birth of Jesus. For he has come to bring light and hope - found in perhaps the most unlikely of places just as he was in that stable in Bethlehem over 2000 years ago.
For Christmas is all about - Immanuel - God with us,
the giver of ‘Hope and Joy’.
With love and prayers from
Bruce Sawyer
(Weardale Methodist Minister)
Claire McClelland
(Priest-in-charge, Upper Weardale)


If you find an angel, please do take it with you and give it a home (or take and give to a friend to continue sharing the hope and joy).
After New Year, we will be recovering any angels that haven't found a home!
