Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
26th April 2024
The preacher at my ordination service was my College Principal, Revd Dr Barrie White. In a section of his sermon aimed specifically at me, he warned that ministry wouldn’t always be easy. There’d be times when I might feel completely out of my depth, worn out by the responsibility, empty of anything useful to give to the people. Some weeks, writing a sermon (and in those days, of course, it was two every Sunday) might seem plain impossible, and whatever was eventually produced not fit for purpose. When I had nothing to give of myself, I was to take comfort that one of my regular duties was to preside at Communion, to offer the bread and wine of salvation to the saints gathered at Christ’s Table. Despite any weakness in the one presiding, God would feed and strengthen his people.
That thought has done its gracious work for me over the years, but another way in which I take comfort at Communion is in the present-day openness of the invitation to come to the Table. In times past, congregations tried their hardest to prevent the ‘unworthy’ from taking communion, and, while it’s true Paul warns that we’re to examine ourselves before taking the bread and wine (I Cor 11:27-29), the context is one of social divisions within the church rather than the perennial problem of human sin. When we despair of ourselves, when we’re only too aware of our ‘unworthiness’, there’s no better time to hear Christ’s invitation to take the bread and wine. Despite any flaws in the guests at the party, still God feeds and strengthens his people.
Ken Stewart
24th April 2024
This week I received emails suggesting a response to “Earth Day” – I should book train tickets to limit my carbon footprint, or a holiday to go walking in nature! Consume more to help the planet … hmmm? I prefer Sam’s Sunday sermon challenge to us, to get out and look around us at the […]
19th April 2024
Margaret and I recently found ourselves in Little Gidding, a tiny village deep in the Cambridgeshire countryside. It’s where in 1629 Nicholas Ferrar, a high church Anglican layman, founded a small religious community for prayer and meditation. Today Little Gidding owes much of its reputation to the poet T. S. Eliot who visited there in […]
17th April 2024
Peter Higgs, professor of physics at the University of Edinburgh, died this last week. He shared the Nobel Prize in Physics in 2013 for the discovery of a fundamental particle whose existence he had predicted fifty years earlier. I met Peter when I was a physics student at Edinburgh in the 1990s. He taught me […]
12th April 2024
Now above the sky he’s King. Many of us sang those words recently on Easter Day – the climax of one of the best-known of the Easter hymns: Jesus Christ is risen today with its repeated Alleluias. Really? Above the sky? Then in a few days on Ascension Day we will celebrate Christ’s ascension to […]
10th April 2024
THROW AWAY OR REPAIR Two contrasting forces – first the idea of built-in obsolescence and making something for today which will not last until tomorrow, essential aspects of what Pope Francis has described as our ‘Throw-away Culture’. Contrasted with this there is the old war-time slogan of ‘Make do and mend’, or the work of […]
5th April 2024
Jesus’ resurrection is a pivotal event in our faith. It symbolizes triumph over darkness, hope over despair, and life over death. In an age characterized by scepticism and doubt, the concept of faith may seem antiquated or irrelevant to some. Yet, Easter invites us to reconsider our perceptions and explore the transformative potential of faith […]
Good Friday, 29th March 2024
I find Good Friday an overwhelming event to write on, so I am borrowing a reflection on Psalm 22 from John van de Laar which I have found helpful. My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?Why are you so far from helping me, from the words of my groaning? Ps 22:1 In the […]
27th March 2024
Today, 27th March, is a day of memories for me, as it is my Dad’s birthday. Born in Newcastle-upon-Tyne just before WW1, he left school at 14 and went straight down the pit, looking after the ponies hauling tubs from coal face to pit bottom. Searching for work in the late 1930s, he came to […]
20th March 2024
It’s only Matthew who records Jesus’ words about the need to be ‘wise as serpents and innocent as doves’ (Matt 10:16). Spoken in a context of mission, Jesus warns his disciples of the possible hardships and persecutions they might encounter in their witnessing to him; ‘see, I am sending you out like sheep into the […]