Sharing some thoughts

  St Francis of Assisi is well known as a kind, compassionate and caring man, but there was also a slightly sterner side to him as well. One day, a woman went to see him and asked what she had to do to be forgiven for her gossiping. St. Francis told her to take feathers and place one at the doorstep of everyone she had spoken ill of in the town. She did so and returned to Francis who then told her to go and retrieve all the feathers. When she attempted to do so, of course they were all gone. By that time the feathers were scattered all around the town. Once again, she returned to St. Francis and told him about the feathers. He said to her, "You wish to repent and be forgiven of your sin. Good. But the damage of your words is done and cannot be taken back." It’s a harsh lesson – forgiveness is certainly possible but some of the damage done by our actions can have lasting effects. And in the reading from the letter of James today (1:17-27) this is the message that he is tryin...

  The readings for the last couple of weeks have challenged us to make some difficult decisions about commitment, and today the readings do exactly the same thing. For the last couple of weeks we have thought about Jesus’ claim to be the Bread of Life or the Living Bread, and today he continues to challenge his listeners as he talks of the bread that came down from heaven (John 6:56-69).     Once again Jesus is saying that people must make a choice for him or against him, and that choice has to be to fully immerse ourselves in him, recognising that we will get it wrong sometimes...   In Paul’s letter to the Ephesians (6:10-20), he is urging his listeners to make a choice, just as he had made a choice. The choice there was whether they were willing to stand as soldiers in God’s army in a spiritual war.   In our often rather mixed up world it’s often easier to just sit on the fence, leaving decisions for others and I think on many occasions that is just what...

  A few years ago on holiday my wife Helen and I found some of those cartoon shapes of people where you put your head into a hole and suddenly have the body of a muscleman or a pirate or any number of other things. They were often associated with seafronts and fairgrounds and whilst they’re seen less often now, they remain quite amusing because the head so often doesn’t look right on the body below. I heard an illustration once which asked what it would look like if Jesus put his head on his followers – on what we call the Body of Christ. Would it look like an amusing misfit or not ? For the last few weeks we’ve heard a lot about bread – last week we had Jesus saying, ‘I am the bread of life’, the week before that we heard of how he spoke to a crowd about the true bread from heaven, giving life to the world, and the week before that we had the account of feeding the 5,000. There are really no bread analogies left to use in sermons and I often wonder why all these bread readin...

I’m sure we’ve all had the experience at some time of giving something to someone and watching with joy at how much it means to them… I’m a little biased but my grandchildren are wonderful at receiving gifts and showing how excited they are – one time my wife had wrapped up some presents in the same paper and when we gave a present to our youngest grandson we realised it had got confused with a present for our niece – now there’s quite a lot of difference in the type of presents a 25 year old young lady might like and what an 8 year old boy might like – but he opened it and gave a big smile and a big thank you before looking to his mum for some sort of advice as to what this might be ! The first response was to appreciate what had been given and it’s always good to see that look of excitement or surprise when you give something to someone. Of course, we may well get a similar response from someone who is desperate for food or a drink and we are able to provide it…. Another gift I can t...