I wonder what you think of when you think of bones. One of my grandsons was about three when I went with him to a toddler music class. It involved a lot of action songs so there was a lot of sitting down and standing up in quick succession. He was becoming impatient because I…

It is a great many years since I first attended a performance of Bach’s St John Passion. Having just been part of a performance of the work I have been as moved this time as I was originally by one simple phrase from the final chorale: ‘And as in death’s repose I lie, watch o’er…

Jesus said, ‘Here are my hands’, as he sat with his friends around the supper table. He took the bread in his hands, and tore the loaf apart, and handed it gently to all of them, urging them to eat, to be part of his body. In his hands he held the cup of blood…

Luke 13: 31 – 35 A few years ago, we visited New Zealand and Australia, and our hotels, in both Dunedin, NZ, and Manley, Australia, were right opposite surfing beaches. I am not a surfer, although I have done a bit of body boarding in my time, but I do know that if a surfer…

Jesus always showed the other side of the question, and turned hard held values on their head. Paradoxically, with Jesus, it wasn’t a case of what you see, is what you get, more a case of, ‘do you get what you see’? Is it surprising though that we don’t always get what Jesus means? The…

Coming home from a meeting a few weeks ago, I inadvertently timed my journey through the heart of the town to coincide with the end of a football match at Portman Road, not my best idea ever.  The match had only just finished and I was thankful that the crowds of fans now filling the…

A shortened version of a message I read on Facebook goes like this: “A young woman watched her new neighbour hang out her washing and she complained to her husband that the clothes were not properly washed as they looked dirty. She considered telling her neighbour and was even going to offer her some washing…

When our sports team wins a cup or our country wins a battle, we arrange a victory parade. The open topped bus is driven slowly through the town, with the smiling heroes on top waving to their adoring fans. It’s a tradition that seems to have started in Roman times, when, on the day of…

For what feels like years we have been waiting for repairs to be carried out to remake the footpath beside the river just along the road from our house. In very heavy rain a couple of Boxing Days ago, the erosion of soil, made worse by high water levels led to a partial collapse of…

The beautiful sight of daffodils at this time of the year reminds me of the first of two separate Easter Day sermons I heard many years ago. Possibly a reader of this contribution may have heard the same stories, from the same speakers, as they are well worth repeating. The first speaker related how he…