What’s your approach to present wrapping: do you do it beautifully and neatly, to raise a sense of anticipation and show how much you care? Or do you do it reluctantly, at the last minute, with whatever wrapping paper the 24-hour garage down the road sells? Or do you give the present without any wrapping…

Sitting in our lounge listening to music, early one morning, and enjoying a break from news available on a variety of channels, my thoughts were disturbed by an advertisement from a mobile phone company.  Trying to entice listeners with an offer of a new phone it ended with the phrase, “And for only £39.99 per…

I have been visiting a dear friend who has been in Ipswich hospital for some time, and each time I go, I wonder which is the best route from Elmsett to Ipswich hospital. What is the definition of best? Quickest? Shortest? Less traffic? My decision is often influenced by things like the time of day…

One of the advantages of being a minister in the East Anglia Methodist District is that every other year we are gifted with a Minister’s Retreat. We go away together for about forty-eight hours, we learn together, we relax together, share fellowship, and eat together, and it is an opportunity to withdraw from our everyday…

The photo which accompanies this article is of a Cyclamen in my garden. The pot which it was in had somehow got hidden underneath an old table and I thought the plant had died as basically there was only the bulb remaining. I eventually brought it out into the open and decided to give it…

This morning I came across new words by John Campbell for a well-known carol tune “Good Christians all, rejoice”. Here are the words: Augustus on his Roman throne, Seemed Lord of all, divine, alone; Yet he knew not what God had planned: One who’d take the world in hand. Only shepherds heard the song: The…

One of my grandmothers had a particularly robust view of God’s will. I struggled with its idiosyncrasies from an early age. It went along the lines that bad things are God’s will so it cannot be changed, and as good things are bound to fail soon it never pays to be optimistic. Generally, I have…

Bible reading : Psalm 139:13 (The Message)You know me inside and out, you know every bone in my body. You know exactly how I was made, bit by bit, how I was sculpted from nothing into something Did you know there are more than 270000 different species of flower on the Earth ? and looking at…

Life can be a struggle at times, marked by pain, loss, grief, broken relationships and ill health. None of us can avoid all of these things because they are part of the journey. We would not be human if we didn’t feel desperate for help at times. The wonder of our faith is that those…

COP28 starts in 10 days’ time in Dubai. The lectionary reading yesterday was the parable of the talents, where a slave owner gives each of his slaves 10 talents, before going away for some time. 10 talents was a considerable sum of money, even one talent was more than any employee or slave could expect…