Did you watch The Queen’s Platinum Jubilee Celebration on Sunday evening?  There was debate in our house about whether or not to watch it and some confusion as to how ‘live’ the event was. I got to wondering how a person starts to organise such an unprecedented event. There’s no guidebook or manual on what…

My son, Richard, relocated to Singapore in January. We obviously miss him very much but Drew and I were excited at the prospect of visiting him. Neither of us had ever been to Singapore before and we were looking forward to the holiday. As the date of our departure approached, I started to get increasingly…

I have always been fascinated by old clocks; the intricacy of a mechanism is astounding but so is the precision of time keeping that is possible when all is well. We have inherited several clocks which tick away happily and require almost no attention apart from their weekly wind. The cogs in a clock movement…

Revelation 5 verse 11  “Then I looked and heard the voice of many angels, numbering thousands upon thousands, and ten thousand times ten thousand.” For many years, my wife and I have ended our breakfast with (so-called) easy-peel satsumas and most mornings I picture the stacked shelf in my local supermarket. Based on the size, each…

A mother eagle builds a comfortable nest for her young, padding it with feathers from her own breast. But the God-given instinct that builds that secure nest also forces the eaglets out of it before long. Eagles are made to fly and love will not fail to teach them. Only then will they become what…

The Sunday before last I was due to lead worship at Framlingham, some 27 miles from where I live. It was forecast to be a pleasant sunny day, so I decided the night before to cycle. I calculated that I needed to leave a couple of hours, so set off at 8.30am, leaving plenty of…

We were woken abruptly last Sunday morning (8th May) just before 5am by a horrendous sound outside.  We currently live opposite a building site and the main road has been closed to through traffic for the last five days, so the loud crash and grating noise outside caused us to wake immediately and look out…

I love singing hymns and if you asked me what my favourite is, I wouldn’t know.  There are so many to choose from.  However, one is number 67 in Singing the Faith: “This, this is the God we adore”, written by Joseph Hart.  This hymn goes back to the 1700s and has really stood the…

With the sky clouded over and the evidence of heavy rainfall to be seen everywhere in the sky and on the roads, pavements and gutters, one hesitates to speak of ‘glory’. Glory bespeaks light, radiance, illumination, brightness and effulgence. It is the very antithesis of clouds and darkness, rain and puddles.The RSV Handy concordance begins…

When I was about 19 one of our farm hedgerows was cut down because it need to be rejuvenated. I walked past is recently and 40+ years later it is healthy and strong. All those years ago, a kindly man cut me a thumb stick from a fine piece of hawthorn as reminder of the…