Sharing some thoughts

from Helen Today is passion Sunday, it is the last Sunday before holy week begins. This means we are nearly there, holy week and Easter are just around the corner. Passion Sunday is the Sunday when we remember Jesus going into the time before His death.  It seems strange to be thinking of Jesus going to His death this early on, in our readings we have heard of God bringing life out of death and yet we are thinking of Jesus journeying to the cross – it makes no  sense ! To me the answer is in the Disney film the Lion King, my favourite Disney  film by the way . The film begins with the music ‘The circle of Life.’ This is a great opening and it shows all the animals in the film coming to see the head of the Lion Pride  Mufasa  offering his new born cub Simba for everyone to see reminding them that something new has happened something that will change their lives.  This new thing is something that we heard about in our reading from the book of  Ezekie L  (37:1-14) . In this

From Helen  Today is of course mothering Sunday, the day when we give thanks for Mums and all those who love and care in a motherly way.  There were  once two little boys who decided to buy their mother some flowers.  So they went out to look for a nice bouquet, however the only one that they really liked was too expensive, so they thought that they would buy her a nice house plant instead. They did this and presented it to their Mum who was really pleased. Then the younger of the two boys explained,  “ well , Mum we saw a lovely bouquet, it was really pretty and you would have loved it, it had a huge ribbon across the top of it on which were the words,’ rest in peace’, we know that you always ask us  to give you some  peace so we would have bought it for you but we didn’t have enough money.” The Mum reassured her sons that a house plant was a much better idea! In our readings today we have heard about love and care. From the love of the mother of Moses  (Exodus 2:1-10)  who

I was at a meeting recently and we were asked to describe what people thought of the Church in Wales. The answers included some positive remarks such as ‘a lifeline for some people’ but also some more challenging answers such as ‘dependable’, ‘people know where we are when they need us’ along with ‘irrelevant’ from someone…. Our readings this morning though really challenge some of those negative comments – if the God of Moses who could bring water from a rock exists then that God is someone people need to know… That’s what we heard in the reading from Exodus (17:1-7). And Paul had met that God powerfully in his own life and his life had been completely transformed and in the reading from his letter to the Romans (5:1-11) we hear a passage full of praise as he celebrates the power and love of God… And then we come to the gospel reading (John 4:5-42) and we have this incredible meeting between Jesus and the woman at the well…  And one of the things we can’t fail to notice is th

From Helen I am not sure if you have given anything up for lent, or if you have taken something new up. One lent I decided that the best thing I could do was to stop watching rubbish on TV and read something Chri stian instead.  I n my watching rubbish on TV I would channel hop, in the hope that I would find something that I could watch. One day  I fell across a programme called “Are you smarter than a ten year old ?” thinking that I was bound to be … I was very, very wrong. Basically on this programme an adult has to answer questions that are based on different aspects of the national curriculum. These questions should be really easy, if a seven year old, or a ten ye ar old can answer them, then an  adult should be able to. There is in the studio a group of children who answer the questions nearly always correctly and the n adults  who answer the same questions  with  varying degrees of success.  At the end of the programme when the adults have failed they had to say, “I am not

from Helen Well, lent is here. I remember as a child thinking of all the different things that I could give up for lent. I tried all sorts, chocolate, crisps, pop, ice cream the list was endless. I never really enjoyed the time as I had spent so long thinking of what to give up that I used to forget the major part of lent which is growing closer to God.  Lent is a time when we think of Jesus in the wilderness and this is why people give things up, but actually it is about a time of change. Jesus went into the wilderness  (Matthew 4:1-11)   to reflect ,  to pray  and he faced temptation but this prepared him for His ministry.  Jesus needed time out to pray to think, to face His temptations and once  He had done  this,  He received help from  angels.  I want this morning to think about what lent might  mean for us as we pray ,  face our temptations and receive  the love that God has for us.  I have often thought of Lent as the ultimate Spiritual exercise regime, it is