Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
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.
Tickets for the Advent service are allocated to the colleges and to Kings alumni. In my one year there post-graduate I must have put my name in and I won a ticket in the lottery. I went alone knowing nothing about it. For the first time I understood why the church has an Advent season. The slow movement of the choir from darkness at the entrance (plus a few candles to see their music!) reaching the altar at the end of the service with increasing light made sense of the waiting for Christmas. (Lessons and music just as Christmas Eve.) It happened to be a perishingly cold day. That and the darkness and the acoustic of the vast space above us made it both magical and awe-inspiring.
Since then, I have found myself wanting churches to wait before getting into being Christmassy until very near to Christmas. Of course, if you have to fit in Nativity play, Toy service, Carol service(s), Christingle service(s) (three at our local parish church!) you are in danger of having to start even before Advent.
But Advent is for thinking about why Christ came so that we celebrate his birth not just as a pretty tale, some good meals and worry about presents but an earth-shattering event.
Margaret Clements
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 […]
14th November 2025
Younger members of our extended family rather like the idea that we have our very own “whomping willow” tree in the garden. This tree in J. K. Rowlings’ Harry Potter books is sentient and might attack you! On a windy day, as the … well … willowy… branches dance around, it’s not hard to see […]
12th November 2025
During this past weekend we had the pleasure of attending the wedding celebration of my schoolfriend Ian. Ian met his first wife at Tyndale; he came along with me and Jackie came with Jan Smith (now Kuhn). Jackie died at a shockingly early age. So here he was marrying the lovely Sue with the support […]
7th November 2025
If you think the rate of technological change is ever-increasing, then you are not alone. We had a technology conference at work this week and one of the recurring themes was AI – “Artificial Intelligence”. It was good to get past the media hype and listen to those working in the industry. The most insightful […]
5th November 2025
So there will be a public inquiry into Orgreave chaired by the Bishop of Sheffield. FORTY years ago, striking miners tried to picket Orgreave coke plant (fuel not drugs!!) near Barnsley and police brought in from the whole country tried to stop them. A pitched battle ensued with arrests and trials for affray etc and […]