Sharing some thoughts

A little girl was taking an evening walk with her father. As she walked she looked up at the stars and said so innocently; "Daddy, if the wrong side of heaven is so beautiful, what must the right side be like !" Today in our gospel (Matt.13:31-33,44-52) we have thought about the kingdom of heaven. To be honest I think it’s wonderful to think of heaven as a place that’s transformed from so much of what we know here and now. There is surely nobody here who can not be affected in some way by watching some of the news recently of hatred in the world whether it be in Gaza or Ukraine or Iraq or any number of other places we hear such tragic news about all too often. The kingdom of heaven must surely be a very different place from this. And I have no doubt that it will be, and yet the kingdom of heaven is not something that is restricted to the future, the kingdom of heaven is here and now – the kingdom is here in a world ready to be transformed, and already seeing that transf...

From Helen  It is good to be here this morning in what is particularly lovely weather. The setting is pretty much perfect, we have company, we have sunshine,  we  have a sea view when we walk out of Church. It is all in the words of a Mr  Kiplings  cake advert ‘exceedingly good’.  Perhaps almost  heavenly ? There is a story about a Sunday school teacher who was trying to prove a point to her class about faith and following God.  She asked,  ‘ If  I sold everything that I have and gave the money to the Church, would that get me into heaven ?’ the Sunday school class responded, ‘NO’. she asked another question, ‘Ok,  If  I so ld everything that I have and ga ve the money to the poor, would that get me into heaven ?’ the response was, ‘NO’ so she tried another tack, ‘If I gave you all my money, would that get me into heaven ?’ ‘NO’. ‘ well , what will get me into heaven?’ One little boy piped up, ‘You have to be dead first....

From Helen I want to step back in time a little this morning, as I want you to try and remember what it was like to be a child…. I remember some of the games I used to play as a child, games such as skipping, kiss chase …. I  will leave  that one to your imagination, weddings (which incidentally I often conducted) and the sound of  music. The last game got a bit boring to be honest. At first I loved the game I would pretend to be the  mothe r superior and my friend Anne  would pretend to be Maria Von Trap. It was a really good game  which involved breaking into song every so often. It was fun the first twice, then I realised that being  the mother superior wasn’t always the best role  and so I suggested we change. A nne thought about  this and decided that she should stay as Maria and I should still be the mother superior. After a  number more goes of the game A nne relented… I could be anyone I wanted but NOT Maria....

The co mments of children can be  wonderful. We can all probably think of a funny story to do with something  a child has said – I remember a while ago when  a 3 year old told Helen that she looked a mess in the  morning ! ! I, of course, would obviously dispute that (at least until she’s made my breakfast ! ) There’s also the great children’s letters to God – I’m a bit sad perhaps but I never tire of hearing things like, ‘Dear God, Did you mean to make giraffes look like that, or was it an  accident ? ’ or ‘Dear God, I keep waiting for a nice summer day, but it hasn’t come – did you forget ?’ or just one more, ‘Dear God, Maybe Cain and Abel would not kill each other so much if they had their own rooms – it works for me and my brother.’ Asking children questions can be a very dangerous thing because they will generally say exactly what they think, when adults will often skirt around the truth if it is  painful !  Few of us will risk asking wha...

In our readings this morning we have heard of how hard it is to follow God sometimes, how it can make us very unpopular when we have to stand against things other people agree with and how difficult the life of being a follower of God seeking to be more like Him can be.   The prophet Jeremiah was torn, he wanted to be popular, he wanted people to listen to him but what he had been told by God to say did not make him popular, in fact sometimes people laughed at him.   In the gospel reading Jesus warned his followers that it was difficult to follow Him. However, it was worth it because God who loves the sparrows,loves us so much that he would die for us. All he asks of us is that we follow Him through everything.   It is a bit like supporting your favourite sports team, or even like being a sports person yourself.   I am not sure about your house but ours has changed recently. There is a lot more football on the television a chart on the back of the do...

Trinity Sunday is a day often made up of a great deal of confusion – the Trinity is never the easiest doctrine to try and explain to people – there can be lots of complicated explanations and many people will try and use symbols as an explanation – it reminds me a little bit of a football match played one night. As the teams were playing the lights went out, and they called on an electrician to sort out the problem – he tried hard but failed, and then another man came forward who said that he knew what to do. Somehow he managed to communicate to some of the crowd to wave an arm in the air – still nothing happened, so he got some more people to do the same and this time asked them all to wave both arms in the air – as they did this the lights suddenly came back on proving the old Chinese proverb that ‘many hands make lights work’ ! It really isn’t a tremendously relevant joke for today except that it perhaps highlights the fact that we need sometimes to just trust in God. This ...

When I was in Uni I was a member of the Christian Union, and was paying a lot of attention to everything that was going on, so much so that it took me a year of being a member to realise that I recognised the treas urer of the Christian Union Matt .  I thought he seemed familiar but I was not sure and in the end I a sked one of my friends what Matts surname was. It was Davies .  I was surprised I had  been in school with a Matt Davies , whom I would never have expected to be a member of the Christian Union as he had been very wild.   When I got home I checked my schoo l photos to see if the Matt Davies  from sc hool might be the same Matt Davies  as the one in University. Sure enough the facial features looked similar, but the biggest give away … and you may think that something like this would stand out a lot, but as I say I am not always the most observant… Matt  had bright,bright red hair !  He was fairly distinctive, but the last I had he...