[Malachi 4:1-2; 2 Thessalonians 3:6-13; Luke 21:5-19] I think it is true to say that there is quite a lot of anxiety around these days fueled partly by worries over climate change, the political and economic future of our country and other uncertainties magnified in ou...

(Numbers 9:15-end; 1 Corinthians 7:17-24) “Whenever the cloud lifted from over the tent, then the Israelites would set out; and in the place where the cloud settled down, there the Israelites would camp. At the command of the Lord the Israelites would set out, and at t...

(Luke 3.15-17, 21-22 ) Some years ago, a friend went on holiday to Jerusalem. He brought me back a memento – it was an old lemon-squash bottle, half-full of murky fluid. I asked what it was, and he solemnly told me that he’d brought me water from the River Jordan. I wa...

(Daniel 5; John 6:1-15) 

"I sat upon the shore fishing, with the arid plains behind me 

Shall I at least set my lands in order? "

(Lines from T S Eliot’s The Waste Land) 

If Eliot’s words are enigmatic, then ambiguous is the designation of Christ as king.  Here is one...

(Hebrews 9:24-end; Mark 1:14-22) “After John was arrested, Jesus came to Galilee, proclaiming the good news of God.”  Good news!  We could do with a bit more of that.  Because there is an awful lot of bad news around at the moment.  There always is, but it seems especi...

It can be hard to talk about.  Because there is an inner hurt we’d rather not reveal.  And we don’t want to put other people in an embarrassing situation – even those who are most sympathetic.  And of course they don’t really know what to say.  And don’t want to upset...

Why, you may justifiably ask, should the feast of Sts Simon and Jude remind me of a very popular children’s show from the mid 1950s until the 1980s called Crackerjack!?

I remember watching Crackerjack hosted early on by Eamonn Andrews on black and white tv with my siste...

(Isaiah 65.19-22, Galatians 5.22-25) Like most of you, I was glued to the television for the opening ceremony of the 2012 London Olympics. I’d more than a passing interest in it because my husband’s godson was performing in the amazing Spectacular, in which we showcase...

(John 6.56-69) Sixty one years ago, my grandfather celebrated his 80th birthday by taking all his family out to dinner, and then to the theatre where we enjoyed Flanders and Swann in “At the Drop of a Hat”. It was all that time ago that I heard the ‘song of the relucta...

When I was teaching history we used to go every year with 200 11-12 year olds to a Tudor manor house in Suffolk called Kentwell.  It was in the parish of Long Melford and for a month in the summer they reconstructed a particular year of Tudor history.  We, both staff a...