Sharing some thoughts

  I always think that a good Lent is full of challenges… For lots of people that might mean giving something up, something like chocolate perhaps. Others might take something up, for example ,  reading the bible more or a Christian book.   Some use Lent as a space to catch up on something that needs doing. Some will take a break from something that they do regularly…    All kinds of things  that might be useful , but none of them are in a spiritual sense unless they  are  do ing  something to get us closer to God….    We can give up chocolate and it might help us lose some weight,  which is good, particularly for people like me,  but will it bring us closer to God  and, if so,  how ?  –  I f the answer is yes, then that’s great, but if it’s just about dieting ,  then it’s not about Lent and it’s not about God…    Similarly ,  with using the time to catch up with something  that ...

  Parish of Central Swansea Advent day by day 2020 Advent is a wonderful but often overlooked season in the church calendar. For many it is associated simply with getting ready for Christmas, but Advent is much more than that. It is a season when we take time out to prepare for the coming again of Jesus, something we celebrate as we mark his birth at Christmas, but something we also await as he has promised to return one day. We wait, not looking up to the skies for something to happen, but we wait celebrating the gift of life and new life through Jesus. We wait, seeking to be more like Jesus as we look to follow his command to love God and to love our neighbour as ourself. Perhaps this year more than ever we can rediscover something about waiting, about longing. It’s been such a difficult year for so many people, but we wait in hope, we wait in expectation and we wait knowing that God has never failed to deliver on any of the promises he makes. Whatever we usually make of the Adve...

  We’re in what is now called the kingdom season in the church calendar – I don’t think it’s a season that is particularly useful as I think our focus must every day of every week be on Christ as the king – the king of our lives, the king of our hopes and aspirations, the king of possibilities for the world and indeed the king of the whole world, so that’s a little hobby horse of mine out of the way.   Having said that, the readings do offer us a focus upon which to reflect on these things in a bit more depth so that’s what I’ll try and do this morning.    Our gospel reading (Matt 25:14-30) is the pretty well known parable of the talents – it’s often been portrayed as a parable about how well we use our gifts, in other words it’s about us, but whilst that may be part of it, I don’t think that’s the biggest part.    The biggest part comes in the first paragraph of what we heard. The master is going on a journey and he distributes his property to his servants...

  As people I think we are regularly tempted to put our lives into different sections, different compartments. Perhaps we have a work life and a social life. Perhaps a church life and private family time. These are just some options of how we might compartmentalise our lives at times and in reality, we may split it down a lot further than this, breaking down each of those sections more…     But our readings today remind us that three very key things in our lives are actually inseparable both from each other and from the lives of Christians in general. Those things are faith, generosity and thankfulness and as we commemorate a different harvest to usual those things are no less important…    In our gospel reading (Luke 17:11-19) we have this amazing account of Jesus being approached by 10 lepers who asked him for healing – perhaps this year more than ever before we recognise the words in the gospel as they approached Jesus ‘keeping their distance.’ Safe physical ...