A family member attended a funeral recently at which a hymn was sung that none of us had ever come across before. It has vanished from use and seems not to be in any of the resources I have access to, both printed hymn books or online. Thinking about old hymns reminded me of one…

Recent revelations about the behaviour of people working at the heart of Government and in leadership have caused a stir. We have been shocked, we say, by the parties in a certain famous street in London. Am I alone in being far more shocked by the way we have overlooked more serious issues? Early on…

Living in the British Isles with a maritime climate and never far from the sea it is unwise to predict the weather in advance; doing so is notoriously fraught with the risk of being wrong. Modern weather forecasting is more reliable than ever when looking a few hours ahead but after that becomes more prone…

On Easter Sunday morning some people will sing Charles Wesley’s ‘Christ the Lord is risen today, Alleluia!’. It is a hymn and a statement of faith. The first line states what seems impossible. (Singing the Faith 298). Earlier hymn books contained a verse that says ‘who the strong man armed hath bound, now in highest…

Matthew 4:7 – ‘Do not put the Lord your God to the test’. When I was beginning my career my friends and I were relieved to have work, pleased if we were offered promotion and grateful for a pay rise. I started out at a time of high interest rates, high inflation and when employment…

When I was at school, in my mind I associated Lent with the hymn ‘Lord Jesus, think on me’ (H&Ps 533). I thought it was gloomy and unnecessarily puritanical when I was in my teens. As I have got older I have realised what a wonderful prayer it is and just as I came to…

Luke 4:3-4 The devil said to him, ‘if you are the son of God, tell this stone to become bread.’ Jesus answered, ‘it is written: “Man cannot live by bread alone”.’ We all know what it is to feel a bit peckish, even to suffer from hypoglycaemia because we have an imbalance between the energy…

I am writing this immediately following the return to the UK of Nazanin Zaghari-Ratcliffe and Anoosheh Ashoori following their detention in Iran. Most of us will have no idea how it feels to be held without reason and without any idea when or if release will come. Similarly, ordinary people condemn such dreadful treatment of…

To my mind, an essential ingredient of spring is primroses in the ditches and later on cowslips too. I love the snowdrops, crocuses, daffodils and others in the garden but wild primroses are on a different level. They are all muddled up with the remains of the die back from last summer, the still raised…

Three weeks ago this morning Russia invaded Ukraine. Terrible things have happened that people prayed would not happen again in Europe, or anywhere else in the world. We have been reminded of the extreme fragility of peace between nations and that despite all that is enshrined in our hopes for a world of united nations,…