One of the realities of life is that we are often much better at noticing what is wrong than noticing what is right. We can live in a warm and comfortable home and complain about the room that needs decorating. We can have a fridge full of food and still wonder what there is to eat. We can have plenty of clothes and still think we have nothing suitable to wear. We can have lots of good things happening in our lives and yet spend a surprising amount of time worrying about the things that aren't going quite as we would like them to. Perhaps that is one reason why Harvest is such a valuable occasion. For one Sunday in the year, we are encouraged to stop and notice the things we often take for granted. Whether or not we have brought gifts today, Harvest reminds us that food does not simply appear on supermarket shelves. Behind every meal are farmers and growers, people who transport food, process it and sell it. Behind all of that is the remarkable world God has created, with its soi...
Genesis 28.10-17; Revelation 12.7-12; John 1.47-51 "Surely the Lord is in this place, and I did not know it." (Genesis 28:16) Those words of Jacob which we heard in the Old Testament reading have echoed through many centuries because they capture an experience that many people recognise. We often assume that God is present in the obviously holy places such as churches, or in prayer, in worship , in those moments when faith seems clear and strong. Yet life doesn’t always work like that . We can find ourselves in places of uncertainty, disappointment, anxiety or loss, and it becomes much harder to believe that God is near . Yet the surprising message of the Bible is that God often chooses those very moments to make himself known. Again and again people discover that God was present long before they recognised him. Heaven is closer to earth than they imagined. That, I think, is the theme that runs th...