I was teaching ten reception age children a week before half term. On the last afternoon, they had a scavenger hunt to do outside. So we went out armed with clipboard and sheets with pictures of the ten plants/ animals they needed to spot and pencils. It was a warm afternoon. When we finished they…
In church this morning, after the monthly midweek Communion Service at Woodbridge Methodist Church, I noticed on the back table a number of potted tomato plants. For a donation you could take one home to plant in the garden. Then when I walked down to the town there were loads of tomato plants for sale…
I have a weakness for overusing the exclamation mark in written exchanges, especially in those short replies that are a feature of social media ‘correspondence’. Punctuation is important, and to over use is to devalue the impact of something that should be more than a throw-away symbol. The same is true of the careless deployment…
Once upon a time two brothers who lived on adjoining farms fell into conflict. It was the first serious rift in 40 years of farming side by side, sharing machinery, and trading labourand goods as needed without a hitch. Then the long collaboration fell apart. It began with a small misunderstanding and it grew into…
This week, our 10 minute service reflects on Psalm 63:4 and we sing Great is your faithfulness (unchanging)
I’m currently putting together a ‘Songs of Praise’ programme. In the light of this, I asked a friend what would be their hymn choice. His response was ‘And did those feet….’. This got me thinking. Is ‘Jerusalem’ a hymn? It’s a very rousing song – some would say it’s England’s second national anthem. Depending on…
We are now many weeks after Easter and all the Easter eggs are probably long gone. Did you know that chocolate was around over 1400 years ago? 600AD – Mayans drank a cold drink made from cacao beans 1325AD – Aztecs make a drink with honey and cocoa. They believed that eating cacao beans gave…
Twelfth Sunday in Ordinary Time. Year C 19th June 2022 Lectionary Readings: Isaiah 65 v1-9; Psalm 22 v19-28; Galatians 3 v23-29; Luke 8 v26-39. ‘But the people were terrified’ (Luke 8 v35d) In the gospel reading for today we read of Jesus healing a man possessed by ‘many demons’. This poor man had been…
The Most Reluctant Convert : the untold story of CS LewisDVD – Fellowship for Performing Arts, 2021 74 minutes £12.99 This is a quite excellent production, superbly acted and filmed in and around Oxford, showing the progress of the life of CS Lewis from ‘hard-boiled atheist to the most renowned Christian author of the past…
Amidst all the pomp and ceremony of the Jubilee weekend celebrations, the BBC managed to hit us with two and half minutes of pure genius and we saw maybe the best bit of television our nation saw in a long time, as the queen invited Paddington Bear to Buckingham Palace for high tea and in…