Sharing some thoughts

Before I begin I have a bit of a confession to make. In school last week in an assembly I confessed to watching neighbours on tv – I actually record it each day so I make sure that I don’t miss it, but that is nothing compared to the next confession. I enjoy politics and I enjoy economics ! They may not be the coolest things around but I enjoy listening to the news at the moment with the various discussions of economists and politicians – of course what is not so good is the very real pain being felt by many people closely affected by the current economic problems around most of the world. I find it interesting that the polls being taken at the moment seem to be showing an increase in popularity for the Prime Minister – the Prime Minster that for the past decade has been telling us, in his role as Chancellor, that the age of boom and bust economies has gone ! Now, I am not for one moment blaming Gordon Brown for the economic turmoil in the world today, but his idea of boom and bust eco...

J D Rockefeller, at the time one of the worlds richest men, wrote 3 ways to get rich – 1) Go to work early, 2) Stay at work late and 3) Find oil… If we choose then we can probably do the first 2 of these, but the third is rather more problematic ! Not many of us get really rich in our lives. We hope to have enough to be comfortable and we generally settle for that, and from the gospel reading tonight we have the suggestion that actually that position may be far better for us. The rich young man approaches Jesus (Mark 10:17-31) and asks him what he can do to inherit eternal life. Jesus runs through the commandments with him, and the young man says he’s kept them but then Jesus moves the goalposts slightly and turns to the question of the man’s wealth – ‘You lack one thing; go, sell what you have and give money to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven; then come and follow me.’ And this was too much for the young man. On a very basic level we can think this is about money, about...

A while ago my brother received an invitation to a Buckingham Palace Garden Party. Obviously there’s a lot of people there, and you’re very fortunate to get anywhere near any of the Royal family who may be present on that particular day. But it’s a great occasion, something that you don’t do very often, and not too many people reject the invitations when they come. A lot of people like a good party, and in the gospel reading today (Matt.22:1-14) we hear about a big party – a party thrown by the king as a wedding banquet for his son. Surely lots of people would want to come. There would probably be great food and lots of it, plenty to drink, wonderful entertainment, and of course the chance to mingle with royalty. There would surely be no shortage of people wanting to come – but there was ! The slaves were sent out to give the invitations to all those that the king wanted to come, but people ignored them… And so the king, furious and keen not to lose face, sent them out again, this t...

Going out of a service some time ago a lady who was visiting this Church said to me, ‘At the end of Guide me O thou great redeemer, we sang the words, “Feed me till I want no more”. We’re not allowed to sing that in our Church’. I could have been a little bit thrown by this comment except for the fact that I actually understood it – the difference comes from some versions of the hymn ending with the words, ‘Feed me now and evermore’, and others with ‘Feed me till I want no more’. Some take exception to that second version simply because we can never be fed enough, and God with all his abundance of gifts never stops feeding us. That is one of the great things we celebrate at Harvest ! In the reading that we heard from the Book of Exodus we are given the account of the manna from heaven – the literal bread from heaven which God provided as the Israelites primary source of food for the whole 40 years they were in the desert. At harvest time, we are giving thanks for the food we have – we ...