All around us, people are at work following their break for Christmas and New Year. The younger amongst us are back in school; when you read this, I will be working away from Suffolk for the first time this year. These are ordinary days. In our Christmas nativity scenes, shepherds, kings (or wise men) and…

Much has been written about religious affiliation since the publication of the UK 2021 census results. There are many ways to interpret the numbers. For what it is worth, I think the numbers support what we know to be true, with an interesting overlay. Is it not the case that this time, at last, more…

A little while ago Helen wrote a piece here that reflected on the shelf of old bibles in her home. She wrote touchingly about people who are history for her but memories for me. One of the people featured was my dear Aunt Edith. When I started preaching over forty years ago, and in the…

I have reflected before on our strange attitude to taxation. For what seems like an age, politics appears to have been obsessed by tax rates. The potential for tax cuts offset by the need to increase taxation is the balance. Why are we surprised and indignant, if we are surprised and indignant, that after the…

The idea of being part of something vast is encouraging; the writer to the Hebrews talks about the cloud of witnesses all around giving encouragement to believers to throw off the weight of sin and its entanglements to run the race to Christ. Being entirely unathletic I have never found the ‘race’ an appealing image…

It may be almost forty years since my mother died but I can still hear her ranting on about the iniquities of frozen vegetables. If frozen was suspicious, canned was sinister and dried bordering on the demonic. She was wrong of course, but against the background of growing up with some appalling apologies for fruit…

The honours system is frequently questioned, not because of the many worthy people who receive a grateful nation’s thanks for their service. Questions arise when there is a hint of cronyism, or an unhealthy link between political activity and honours received. If you could nominate an Old Testament character for an honour, I wonder who…

Those who know me will not be surprised to learn that as a child I disliked see-saws, roundabouts, and swings. Roundabouts are the least offensive to me as they have the advantage of not constantly delivering shocks and changing direction. To this day I cannot lose the memory of having to take the children on…

Today’s gospel reading is that challenging parable about what we earn, if we are in paid employment [Matthew 20:1-16]. It also reveals a message about how we deal with the things we do in life, not least our voluntary roles and responsibilities in our churches and more widely. At the risk of losing all the…

Just before the beginning of COVID lock-down, the New Zealand hymnwriter, Shirley Erena Murray died. Had it not been for COVID, her hymns would have featured in various UK events in that year; one such had been planned for East Suffolk. Shirley Murray was born into a Methodist family and married a Presbyterian minister. Her…