September 2025

Some of my earliest memories are accompanying my Dad in his allotment. Something I did from about six months old. My Dad’s allotment was on land belonging to ‘Sutton’s Seeds’ which used to be based in Reading, until the M4 motorway was driven through the middle of the seed beds in the late 1960’s.

My Dad’s plot was next to his Uncle Jim’s plot and quite often the pair of them worked together sharing seeds and produce. I realise now that my Great-Uncle ensured that my Dad and his growing family always had enough to eat. Money was scarce but...

John 3:13-17

There’s a moment in Oscar Wilde’s play The Importance of Being Earnest when Miss Prism, the governess, admits to having written a novel. Cecily expresses the hope that it does not have a happy ending, and Miss Prism says:

“The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily. That is what fiction means.”

In fact, as opposed to in fiction, the good often end unhappily. The world is full of innocent suffering – look no further than Gaza, where children are dying for lack of food, for evidence of that. And on Holy Cross Day we reflect on the...

I am pleased and privileged to have been given the opportunity to speak to you this morning about the passage from Deuteronomy, which to me is one of the most significant passages in the whole of Scripture.

You need a bit of background to help you see where this passage is coming from. In the course of leading the Israelites through the wilderness for 40 years, Moses at one point seemed to rebel against God. He took credit for performing a miracle himself, rather than attributing it to God’s love, holiness and power. Because of this, God told Moses that...