I’m grateful to Ian Lawson for pointing out that Friday of last week was the 125^th anniversary of the laying of the foundation stone of this church, an event that it’s fitting that we contemplate and celebrate. The foundation stone was laid by the then Bishop of Edinburgh, the Right Reverend John Dowden, an Irishman from the city of Cork who was consecrated as bishop of this diocese in 1886 and who served in that capacity until his death in 1910, a few months short of his seventieth birthday. Fittingly, the memorial to him in the Cathedral was designed...

Now hope that is seen is not hope. For who hopes for what is seen? But if we hope for what we do not see, we wait for it with patience (Romans 8:24-25)

How often have we wondered whether something in our garden is a plant or a weed? Worse still is when someone asks us that question and we don’t know the answer. We can try and bluff our way out of it. With any luck the person asking the question will forget what we said. Alternatively, we can be honest and say that we really do not know...

I have always been a gardener. Some of my earliest memories of my Father and my childhood are of working alongside him in the allotment he had. My Dad’s plot was next to that of my Great Uncle Jim’s and I loved, even as I was then, no more than a toddler, digging the ground and planting things like they did; and the excitement I felt when my Auntie Dorothy appeared one day with a miniature gardening set of tools all for me. Even saying those words evokes that same sense of excitement in me.

The feel of the soil...

Zechariah 9:9

“Rejoice greatly, O daughter Zion!

   Shout aloud, O daughter Jerusalem!

Lo, your king comes to you;

   triumphant and victorious is he,

humble and riding on a donkey,

   on a colt, the foal of a donkey.”

That opening verse for Zachariah sounds very familiar to our ears as it echoes the readings we hear on Palm Sunday. Zachariah is predicting the coming of the promised Messiah centuries before Jesus rode into Jerusalem on a donkey. Zechariah also refers to the Messiah as ‘King’ - perhaps suggesting that the anointed one when he comes would be powerful and noticeably so.

I think...

“And whoever gives even a cup of cold water to one of these little ones in the name of a disciple – truly I tell you, none of these will lose their reward.”

A cup of cold water. It seems such a small thing, though whether it is a small thing depends on the context. The saying reminded me of the generosity of Sir Philip Sidney, the English poet, courtier and soldier who was fatally wounded when fighting against the Spanish in the Netherlands during the reign of Elizabeth I of England. His close friend and biographer Fulke Greville described...