December 2022

May God bless you and yours this coming year.

I once was lost, but now am found; was blind, but now I see

If I was to ask you from what hymn the above line comes from, I expect that you would immediately and confidently tell me it was from “Amazing Grace” written by John Newton (1725-1807).  Perhaps not so well known is that Sunday 1^st January 2023, marks the 250^th anniversary of that much loved hymn. John Newton penned the famous words “Amazing Grace” for a sermon for his 1773 New Year’s Service at the Church of St Peter and St Paul,  Olney, some 60 miles...

In the story book; ‘Jesus’ Christmas Party’, a particular favourite of mine, the main character is a somewhat harassed and grumpy inn keeper.He keeps getting woken up in the middle of the night by various visitors who are either seeking a room in the already over filled inn or who come to visit the folk in the stable. The inn keeper has a catch phrase of ‘round the back’ which he shouts at those who disturb his sleep. When the heavenly host appear and start singing it drives the inn keeper to distraction and his anger boils over and he...

ADVENT IV  Year A

Sunday  18th December 2022

I have realised, that I have my mother’s hands. Not literally, but the older I get the more my fingers and skin look like hers. They are not particularly big hands, they are quite slender for a man and reasonably regular, (despite the arthritis) like my Mum’s but it is especially, the way the veins stand proud on the surface of my hands and the texture of the skin that remind me of my mum. If you compare our hands, there is definitely no mistaking whose son I am.

I wonder what...

Are you the one who is to come, or are we to wait for another? (Matthew 11:3)

How many times would we have liked to have asked someone who they are – who they really are – but modern etiquette and increasingly political correctness dictates our social interaction with others.  Some might take offence or even worse post something on social media for all to see. One party feels entirely justified by their actions; the other is publicly humiliated and even vilified.  John the Baptist felt no such restraints. He was bold, abrasive and at times more than direct in...

Isaiah 11:1-10

Sometimes the prophets, including Isaiah, attribute the words that they offer to God, allowing God to speak through them. That’s not the case with today’s reading. This is visionary writing. Isaiah’s vision is a vision of hope – and hope is one of the themes of Advent – and it is also as a vision of judgement – and that is another important Advent theme. Judgement and hope don’t, on the face of it, seem to go together. We don’t instinctively hope to be judged. Yet Isaiah’s message is a message of hope. For what sort of people...