I wonder if we will ever go back to church meetings as they were, before lockdown? You know, when there was a Church Council, and it was dark and rainy, or thick fog and ice, and your first thought was that the sofa in your lounge looked a lot more inviting than a hard chair…

When I was a boy at home, one of the pre-harvest rituals on the farm was that of ‘getting the combine ready’. In the late 1960s and early 1970s machines were very much smaller than those we see now and almost every farm had its own. Farm pest control was not so good in those…

In the latest Spring 2021 Connexion magazine Revd. David Perry talks about our “Kairos Moment” i.e.” a Godly time of maximum opportunity for change to occur”. Post-pandemic is a “Kairos Moment”. David Perry challenges Methodists to establish “new places for new people” as we decide which path to take when churches re-open. Communities are “fatigued,…

Although there are many psalms of praise, Psalm 145 is the only psalm specifically identified as a Psalm of praise. The entire psalm speaks of praise, of why we are to praise God and then words in praise of God. One question Antony Billington explores in his bible study on this psalm is how God…

Meditation on God’s Word doesn’t have to end when your devotional time is over. You can continue the blessing by taking scripture with you throughout the day. Some people memorize a passage or write it down so that they can read it again when they have a few moments.  Leslie B. Flynn tells of a…

Monday 12th April 2021 saw the lifting of further government restrictions as a part of the so called “roadmap to recovery” and along with half the population of Ipswich we visited the wonderful “Jimmy’s Farm” at our first opportunity. We have spent many happy hours visiting the farm in the past and it is better…

Words, like clothes, go in and out of fashion. The meaning of words change over time. Often, we can recognise a person’s age by the words they use. National and global events create new words and new usage of old words, and none more so than the global event of the Covid 19 pandemic. Since…

When you hear the words ‘investing’ or ‘capital’ your mind almost inevitably turns to thoughts of money and savings.  Finance, whether personal, community or national, features constantly in the news. We are accustomed to associating ‘investing’ and ‘capital’ with money. It’s quite normal. In financial terms, you can invest more money thus increasing the capital…

God’s people have always been singing, so the hymn goes. Reflecting on the last year, it is interesting the differences there are between us over the place of singing in worship – it seems that we are not all reacting the same way. I have always loved hymns and the pleasure of singing in a…

Numbers 14:3 “Why is the Lord bringing us to this land only to let us fall by the sword?  Our wives and children will be taken as plunder.  Wouldn’t it be better for us to back to Egypt?” As the Israelites approached the land of Canaan, the Promised Land, Moses sent out twelve spies to…