Thought for the Day
July 3rd
Do you have a favourite Bible reading that you turn to in good times and bad and when stressed? Psalm 23: “The Lord is my shepherd” is a popular choice but mine has been Philippians 4: 4–8 since I was eleven. It was read by the headmistress on my first day in Senior School, and read by me on my final day. It has accompanied me through university, and since, being the reading on several occasions when I badly needed Paul’s advice. The reading is cheerful and calm and made sense even to an eleven-year old.
By the way, have you ever noticed that Paul usually puts practical advice near the end of his letters? When something is read aloud, you remember the last bits more than the middle.
Like us, Paul’s first hearers would have been a mixture of happy, sad, worried, rich and poor but he tells them all, “Rejoice in the Lord always, and again I say, rejoice”. God is with us, and will be with us, regardless of our mood.
“Do not worry… but in everything with prayer and supplication let your requests be made known to God”. (As an eleven-year old I had to ask at home what supplication meant and God did not supply the bicycle that I so much wanted!)
Then “Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever is just, whatever is pure, whatever is pleasing, whatever is commendable, if there is anything worthy of praise think about these things”.
Maybe this piece sounds like a wellness guru in the Sunday paper. It is still good advice.
Margaret Clements
July 1st
The wearing of face masks has become a huge source of controversy in America. Listening to a TV interview in which protests about masks seemed to get ever more outlandish, I couldn’t bear it anymore so I walked away: We should focus on what is good, shouldn’t we? Whatever is true, whatever is honourable, whatever […]
June 29th
Often, on Zoom “coffee mornings”, the conversation gets round to toilets. Cilla sometimes joins from Burton Bradstock and confirms what is widely reported, that, as public toilets are closed, hedgerows and dunes by the sea are used… One of the thorniest problems for future use of all kinds of buildings, including churches, is – toilets… […]
June 26th
Our thought for this day is provided by one of our members reflecting on their life, attitudes, desire for change and struggling to understand our own white privilege in light of #blacklivesmatter. “Black Lives Matter” challenges me: how much do I still have an inbuilt pro-white bias? I’ve always been OK around black people, BUT […]
June 24th
Seen from our Portishead home the ships plying to and from Avonmouth and Portbury make a fascinating sight: mighty bulk-carriers and tankers, snub-nosed car-carriers, container ships resembling nautical shopping-trolleys piled high with boxes… What we rarely see are the men and women crewing them. They’re invisible behind the plate glass of the bridge, or down […]
June 22nd
There’s a sense of normality in the air – more cars on the roads; more people about; more businesses open. It’s not exactly normal – there are signs, stickers and perspex sheets all over the place, lots of folk are wearing masks; barriers create more space for pedestrians, people maintain social distances. Not “normal-as-before”, but, […]
June 19th
Did you know that two out of every three of the 70 billion farm animals killed for food each year are farmed industrially in factory farms? Did you know that one out of every six or seven birds on Earth is a chicken? According to the RSPCA, every year over one billion chickens are slaughtered […]
June 17th
There is a small slip of paper blu-tacked to the tiles on my kitchen wall. It’s been there for three years or more. It came home in my pocket after clearing up at Tyndale when during a service we were asked to write what we wanted to pray for on a piece of paper and […]
June 15th
The shops have reopened today! But will everything go back to normal? Jeremy Vine is asking around on Radio Two and in Grantham it is very quiet with no queues. Good to know! So the consumption begins anew. Will there be a run on knickers like there was toilet paper? Will there be people scrambling […]
June 12th
It used to be simple, now it’s more complicated. That’s what they’re saying – it was simple to impose a lockdown but when it comes to easing the lockdown, it’s more complicated. Schools have one set of issues, hospitality businesses another; debate rages over the appropriate distance for social distancing, ‘bubbles’ allow some contact but […]