Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
7th January 2026
CHANGE AND CHANGELESSNESS
What a world of change we live in. I find it remarkable that to send a letter by first-class post, even a short distance, costs £1.70, whereas an email can circuit the world for practically nothing. We may well be amongst the few who still use details of TV Channels to determine what we watch, rather than search a wide spectrum of programmes on iPlayer, Netflix etc. Increasingly we receive messages from family and friends that they have given up their landline telephone in favour of a smart phone and would we therefore note their new unmemorable number.
Reverting to the world I grew up in, I note that the family did not run a car, did not have a telephone or a television, nor a refrigerator or deep freeze: peas then came in pods not in ice. A hot tub or ‘copper’ and a hand-rotated mangle were the antecedents of the washing machine and central heating had not yet warmed our sometimes chilly homes.
Today we live with dramatic changes and can anticipate living in a world where ever greater changes can be expected: driverless cars, drone deliveries, new adventures in space travel, the human mind competing with AI.
Against all that we have to set the revelation of God, in time-specific scripture and in the life, death and resurrection of Jesus Christ in a particular place at a precise time which must always be the context of our understanding of what for us must be eternal truth. How are scientific advances parts of the coming of his kingdom? And what does it mean to pray ‘give us today our daily bread’ when we have many weeks of food awaiting our attention in our freezers? Or for that matter how do we get alongside that prayer prayed by peoples living with life-threatening famine? So well might we pray ‘Deliver us from evil.’
How important that we learn to relate a world of change to the world that the changeless God has given us, and which by his grace will be renewed when history has run its course.
John Briggs
31st December 2025
We’ve reached the turning of the year: goodbye to 2025 and hello to 2026. TV, radio, newspapers and magazines invite us to review the year that’s departing – the past 12 months’ political headlines, major news stories, sporting events, gossip from the world of entertainment, scandals, obituaries and the like – before going on to […]
19th December 2025
BLUE CHRISTMAS 2025 There are times when you get the same message twice. I came across this from Paul Lavender, the minister of Mount Pleasant Baptist Church in Northampton, the day after Sam’s sermon last Sunday. I have edited it a little for length. Many thanks to Paul. Christmas speaks most clearly to those who […]
17th December 2025
Advent can be a wonderful time of anticipation and reflection, but it can also be hectic with a tendency towards life beginning to feel somewhat chaotic as we try and squeeze ever more into each 24 hours as Christmas approaches. I’m listening to Miranda Hart’s book, “I Haven’t Been Entirely Honest with You” in which […]
12th December 2025
Everyone knows Kings College Cambridge Nine Lessons and Carol Service broadcast worldwide on Christmas Eve. Few know that there is a similar service every year on Advent Sunday. In origin, before radio etc, the Christmas Eve service was “a gift to the City of Cambridge” whereas the Advent Service was (and is) for the University. […]
10th December 2025
This week’s lectionary reading from Psalm 72 has set me off musing about the nature of national leadership. Hereditary monarchy or democracy? Oligarchy or plutocracy or something-else-ocracy? No, I don’t know what any of those words mean either. Government by consent or dictatorship? King Donald of America? King Charles of Australia? Your Party have just […]
5th December 2025
“Christians are not distinguished from the rest of mankind either in locality or in speech or in customs. For they dwell not somewhere in cities of their own, neither do they use some different language, nor practise an extraordinary kind of life. Nor again do they possess any invention discovered by any intelligence or study […]
28th November 2025
Trinity Theology In the church’s history, the theology of the Trinity has from time to time caused major difficulties; for Baptists, for example, the lapse of many in the General Baptist tradition into Unitarianism. But thinking positively here is a helpful summary of Christian theology. Thus in God the Father we have God before us; […]
26th November 2025
Do you ever shout at the television? Of course you don’t! However, I’m afraid I do. I know there’s no point, but it relieves my feelings. What provokes this futile reaction is usually when I turn on the television to watch a particular programme only to be told to watch something else on iPlayer NOW. […]
21st November 2025
A few years ago when Merry and I were walking through a street market in Bangladesh, I screwed up my courage to attempt to haggle over the price of oranges. The sum asked of me, though undoubtedly higher than anything asked of a local, was very cheap by European standards, but I thought I should […]