Thought for the Day
15th September 2021
Our faith is one of fresh starts. Jesus healed people and talked to them about starting their lives again. Each week we confess our sins and start anew having received a forgiveness we don’t deserve. In our baptism, we die to the old and are born into the new.
Without wanting to overplay things too much, Saturday 11th September felt like a collective fresh start for the people of Tyndale. We gathered together outdoors, shared food and talked face to face for the first time in well over a year. It felt wonderful.
We have to thank those with the vision, skill and energy to make an event like that happen. We also have to give thanks that we have made it this far through such a terrible time. But there is also the second part of the fresh start, the part where we say to God and to ourselves “so now what?” Let us take a little time over the next few weeks to think, to pray and talk to each other about our way forward together.
Nick Parsons
13th September 2021
I recently made a new will. Having decided what I wanted it to say I took professional advice to get the wording right. The result was a pretty dry piece of prose! While studying family history I have looked at several earlier wills – quite a contrast. One from 1834 began: In the first place […]
10th September 2021
Suppose someone comes into your meeting dressed in fancy clothes and expensive jewellery, and another comes in who is poor and dressed in dirty clothes. If you give special attention and a good seat to the rich person, but you say to the poor one, “You can stand over there, or else sit on the […]
8th September 2021
I’m writing this on 2nd September, the first day at primary school for Rachel’s grand-daughter. Four-and-a-half years seem to have gone quickly since River was born. A myriad of educational opportunities await her. Who knows where ‘finding out’ will lead? Although we grown-ups know it, it won’t be helpful at this point for a four-year-old […]
6th September 2021
Forgiveness The extension of the child abuse enquiry beyond the Church of England and the Roman Catholic Church to other religious communities has this week identified the offering of forgiveness as a contributing factor. This must, of course, be a perverted view of what Jesus taught – in fact, that ‘cheap grace’ of which Bonhoeffer […]
3rd September 2021
This week I have lost my voice. For two days I have had no voice at all. A slight croak was all I could manage. Then it began to ease, but honestly it’s not much better several days on. I am extremely grateful to Rachel for taking on a funeral at very short notice, and […]
30th August 2021
In her thought for the day on 18 August my other half Margaret set us thinking about names, so I’ll continue. I was once talking with a German Baptist theologian, just a few years older than myself, and somehow the topic of names came up. I remarked that my parents, reflecting the patriotic mood of […]
27th August 2021
As a professional linguist, words don’t often fail me. But the sheer enormity of events in Afghanistan and the terrible scenes from Kabul airport leave me unable to formulate a neatly packaged ‘thought’ for a day that is quite likely to see the last British evacuation flight leaving that desperate land. There is a dreadful […]
25th August 2021
If I may be allowed to reminisce yet again on my time as a local church minister, I would like to take the opportunity to offer public thanks for those lovely souls whom I came to think of as minister’s tonics. Very occasionally – only very, very occasionally – a minister can get tired, fed-up, […]
23rd August 2021
Do you ever watch the television programme called the Repair Shop? It features members of the public who have some treasured possession that has seen better days, and is in need of attention and T. L .C. to bring it back to its former glory. At the Repair Shop a group of highly skilled and […]