The source of the River Thames in Gloucestershire is a muddy hole in wet times, marked by an almost indecipherable stone tablet but adorned by three wooden signs. The Thames Path will lead a walker to Woolwich and then to the sea. Throughout Lent, I have been reflecting on the temptations of Jesus in the…

Matthew 4:11b: ‘…and suddenly angels came and waited on him.’ Last week we reflected on the lull after the storm; the peace that descends when the raging is over. For Jesus, the temptations were over, the devil had gone and he was left but then, we read, ‘suddenly angels came and waited on him’. Jesus…

Matthew 4:11 ‘Then the devil left him.’ The storm raged, the sea crashed, and all night long the gale blew. In the morning, the sun came out and the wind abated. The sea was still rough, but all that remained of the force of the night’s activity was seaweed on the road and some spray…

Matthew 4:8–9:Again, the devil took him to a very high mountain and showed him all the kingdoms of the world and their splendour. “All this I will give you,” he said, “if you will bow down and worship me.” In the third of the temptations of Jesus in the wilderness, the Devil does not use…

The second of the temptations Jesus faced (Matthew 4:5–7) was the challenge to throw himself off a high building and trust God to keep him safe. The taunt, ‘if you are the Son of God’, underpins the Devil’s goading. Every time I read these verses, I have a couple of thoughts. First, years ago I…

I find it almost unbelievable that our grandson, not yet two years old, loves home made bread and butter. In my experience, most children turn their noses up at anything but white bread – I certainly did when I was at school. In the first of the temptations Jesus faced in the wilderness, he had…

Usually when someone says that something is a ‘blot on the landscape’ they refer to an unsightly human construction in the midst of nature. Or they note an out of place development amidst other more pleasing architecture. Looking across the fields recently in the February sunshine there was one ploughed field, recently relieved of its…

Twenty years or more ago my father advised me to make sure I had a lasting power of attorney in place well ahead of needing it. We have recently gone through the tortuous process of creating and registering the necessary documents so that we can be supported should it become necessary. It is a long…

We live in a house in which there are clocks in almost all rooms. They are synchronised on Sundays when they are wound and put right but as the week goes on, they drift apart, affected by air pressure and temperature and all the other things that old clocks are influenced by. One thing is…

In the last few months I have shared a few of these ‘thoughts’ based on the protracted experience of my retirement and that of two other colleagues. The latest one was really very funny provided I laugh at myself. On the occasion of the aforementioned ‘do’ I was at an all-day conference that ended with…