Thought for the Day
A one-minute read to inspire or challenge. Written by members of the church and updated every few days.
26th September 2025
We are now into Creationtide – the season when Churches celebrate the beauty of God’s creation and consider how we care, or do not care, for it.
We have been decluttering our home for months and hence have been to the local recycling centre frequently. So much stuff thrown away! In particular so much cardboard! (Amazon etc?)
Is it better to drive to the Mall to buy something (petrol, global warming etc) or get it on Amazon (van delivered, cardboard and recycling cardboard)?
Then there is food. We are bombarded by magazines and news articles advocating for this or that. Dairy milk is bad – cows emit methane and use land which would grow crops. Almond milk is bad – almond trees need a lot of water, grow in countries which are short of water and almonds have to be imported.
What are we to do? There can be a case made against almost all foods that they use some resource which might be used for something else which is seen by the writer as a better use of God’s earth. But we have to eat.
Similar arguments rage over fabrics but we have to wear clothes!
Perhaps we, as individuals, should look at whether we waste the products of God’s earth. Do we buy food and then do not use it in time? Are we beguiled into buying food ‘on offer’ which we will never use? Do we throw away clothes which, at least, could go to a charity shop not to the tip?
Perhaps working on our own wastefulness is a way for us when we feel larger issues are overwhelming.
Margaret Clements
24th September 2025
Recently I fell down the stairs from my flat, sustaining six rib fractures. I’ve only broken my tibia before, just above the ankle, playing football over forty years ago. When breaking a bone, it’s reassuring for the patient to remember that where new bone growth bridges the gap created by the break, the bone will […]
19th September 2025
I’ve just finished reading Skies of Thunder by American writer Caroline Alexander. It’s about the massive allied airlift of supplies into China in World War II, to aid the beleaguered Chinese army resist the Japanese. It involved flying over ‘the Hump’ of the Himalayan foothills, one of the most dangerous air routes in the world, […]
17th September 2025
If you were a 12th Century aristocratic couple living in the Rhineland and your tenth child turned out to be a sickly little girl given to supernatural visions, what might you have done with her? Born in 1098, Hildegard, when just eight, was put into the care of the reclusive abbess Jutta at the Benedictine […]
12th September 2025
In my last “Thought” I wrote about us now living opposite Christ Church in Nailsea. Like so many Anglican churches these days it shares a Rector with a neighbouring parish – in this case the village of Tickenham. There the church is dedicated to Saint Quiricus and Saint Julietta. No, I had never heard of […]
10th September 2025
I’ve found myself needing to take a number of taxi journeys recently. Drivers have remarked on the weather (!), Bristol traffic, football club ownership and gym training regimes. More often though, they have initiated conversations about politics (the state of the country) or on immigration. Prompted by what my driver was saying in one such […]
5th September 2025
Elie Wiesel’s Night is one of the most telling descriptions of life in concentration camps. In stark language he writes: ‘Never shall I forget that night, the first night in camp, which has turned my life into one long night, seven times cursed and seven times sealed. Never shall I forget that smoke. Never shall […]
3rd September 2025
The gospel reading for this week consists of two short stories told by Jesus in Luke 1:7-14. Picture the scene. Jesus has been invited to join one of the leaders of the Pharisees for a meal. It is the Sabbath; perhaps they are on their way back from the synagogue. Wait a minute… are these […]
29th August 2025
He called a child, whom he put among them, and said, ‘Truly I tell you, unless you change and become like children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven. Whoever becomes humble like this child is the greatest in the kingdom of heaven. Matthew 18: 2 – 4 I have been on another train […]
27th August 2025
Recently I heard a Radio 4 broadcast about the very high level of loneliness among 16-24 year-olds. The program discussed the impact of social media and the decrease in live human contact. A university lecturer said she used to have to ask for quiet when starting a lecture but now she finds near silence in […]