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Inspired to live and share

  Today we celebrate the Feast Day of St Peter and St Paul. It’s the day when we remember them especially but more importantly consider their example to the Church and to us today.  Eugene Petersen a theology scholar wrote, ‘Among the apostles, the one absolutely stunning success was Judas, and the one thoroughly grovelling failure was Peter. Judas was a success in the ways that most impress us: he was successful both financially and politically. He cleverly arranged to control the money of the apostolic band; he skilfully manipulated the political forces of the day to accomplish his goal.  And Peter was a failure in ways that we most dread: he was impotent in a crisis and socially inept. At the arrest of Jesus he collapsed, a hapless, blustering coward; in the most critical situations of his life with Jesus, the confession on the road to Caesarea Philippi and the vision on the Mount of transfiguration, he said the most embarrassingly inappropriate things.  He was...
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The revolution of belonging

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There’s a story about a church where a very wealthy man rose to talk about his journey of faith. "I'm a millionaire," he began, "and I attribute it all to the rich blessings of God in my life. I can still remember the turning point in my faith, like it was yesterday: I had just earned my first pound and I went to a church meeting that night. The speaker was a missionary who spoke about his work. I knew that I only had this pound and that was all I had in the world. I had to either give it all to God's work or nothing at all. So, at that moment I decided to give all the money I had in the world to God. I believe that God blessed that decision, and that is why I am a rich man today." As he finished speaking it was clear that everyone had been really moved by this man's story. But, as he took his seat, a little old lady sitting in the same pew leaned over and said: "Wonderful story! I dare you to do it again. Give all the money you have in the worl...
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Embracing the mystery

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  Today we celebrate Trinity Sunday . It is the day that, when having the luxury of more than one preacher available, you perhaps give a little internal cheer when you’re not on the rota to preach! But it’s  actually a   really powerful  day in the church calendar and a day which offers us so much in terms of guidance and motivation in life.    But that comes with a warning and that is that God is greater than we can understand.  God would not be God if that wasn’t true!  St Augustine wrote as far back as the 4th century that any God which we can understand is not God…  Having said that though, there is more than enough that we do and can know to make a sensible decision to trust God…  There’s a good story of a young girl in school one day – the teacher approaches her and asks what she is drawing – the child replies, ‘I am drawing God’, ‘But nobody knows what God looks like’ said the teacher, to which the child replied, ‘They will in a m...
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Pentecost: Willingness not worthiness

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As we’ve been thinking about in our service, today is Pentecost. It is of course the day when we remember how the Church was empowered by the Holy Spirit, and is empowered today… And this evening I want to pick out and think about just a few parts of our second reading (2 Cor 3:4-18) Vs. 4&5 say, ‘Such is the confidence that we have through Christ towards God. Not that we are competent of ourselves to claim anything as coming from us, our competence is from God’. We live in a society where people are encouraged to stand up for themselves, where the confident, it seems sometimes, can really get on in life fuelled by an attitude that says, ‘we’re good’. We can take credit all too easily for things that go well perhaps. It can be a tribute to hard work. It can be the recognition that something has gone well.  And a spirit of celebration is great. We are right to celebrate the gifts that God has given us. And that is the crucial part of this – ‘the gifts God has given us’....
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