Sharing some thoughts

After a long Sunday school lesson about creation a teacher said, 'Johnny, can you tell me who made you?' After a little pause, Johnny replied, 'God made part of me.' After working so hard on her lesson the teacher was a little exasperated and asked him what he meant. He replied, 'well God made me really small, and I grew the rest myself.' Little Johnny had missed the point of the lesson that it was God who creates us and God who continues to guide us through our lives. The bible uses lots of imagery of sheep and shepherds - perhaps the most famous of all being the opening words of psalm 23, 'The Lord is my shepherd, I shall not want.' We are reminded of God's presence as the great shepherd of his sheep - the one who oversees us, who guides us, who protects, who feeds us and nurtures us - the one who is willing to offer anything for even one of his sheep because he cares so much. Each of our readings this morning have something to do with...

This week the great American evangelist Billy Graham celebrated his 95 th  birthday. On that day he released a short film entitled ‘The Cross’. It was, as he described it, probably his final public message. In the film there were two powerful personal stories told of lives that had been transformed by the good news of Jesus. It was a reminder of the power of God to transform situations of darkness and misery into acceptance, peace and even joy. It was a reminder that even out of the darkest of situations there is a firm hope built on the resurrection of Jesus, because in that resurrection from the dead we recognise that death has no power over us, that God guides on every step of a journey into eternity. On Remembrance Sunday we think about lives that have been transformed by the terrors of war – lives that have been lost or ruined, lives that have been given in the hope of achieving something better not for themselves but for all people. As we recognise the hurt caused in war...

The story of Zacchaeus that we have heard  in our gospel reading  (Luke 19:1-10) is a tremendous story. It’s one of the best known accounts in the whole of the Bible . It’s  one that’s very often used in Sunday Schools ,  and for that reason many people have known it since childhood. The basics of the story are of course  that Jesus came into Jericho one day, and Zacchaeus, a short man, climbed up into a tree to get a good view of him. Jesus saw him there, and called him down out of the tree and told him he was coming to his house for tea… From a very simple story we can actually learn so much though about the character of Jesus.  T he first is that he  probably  knew  that Zacchaeus was  not the nicest man in the town. He was a chief tax collector, and they were notoriously dishonest people at the time - many people  in the crowd that day  would have  certainly  been far more honest, but Jesus didn’t care. In Za...