Genesis 18:17-33 ‘Abraham pleads for Sodom’
Sermon, 14th August
Genesis 18:1-15 ‘Three visitors’
Sermon, 7th August
Genesis 16:1-16 ‘Hagar and Ishmael’
Sermon, 31st July
Minister’s Letter Summer 2016
June 15, 2016 By
Dear friends,
Our girls are counting down the days until the end of their school career (if career is the right term). Some other young people in the congregation are at the same stage – there is a lot resting on these exams. Time passes much more quickly than you think it will. None of us have all the time in the world.
The writer of the book of Ecclesiastes writes about different times and seasons of life in chapter 3 of the book. He says:
There is a time for everything,
and a season for every activity under the heavens:
a time to be born and a time to die,
a time to plant and a time to uproot,
a time to kill and a time to heal,
a time to tear down and a time to build,
a time to weep and a time to laugh,
a time to mourn and a time to dance.
In between one season and another there is usually a period of transition or transitions. The time in between birth and death is called ‘life’. The ‘planting’ of the crop might happen in the spring time, while the ‘uprooting’ might occur at harvest. The transitions in between ‘planting’ and ‘uprooting’ could be considered growth, development and ripening.
We face transitions in life all of the time – suddenly you are 50 or 60 or 70 – it doesn’t happen over night but it creeps up on you. But there are different stages in life that we might be more aware of; each of them comes with a different set of challenges.
Life’s transitions can be smoother if we have time to think and reflect before they happen; but we don’t have the foreknowledge of sudden events that catch us off guard.
Isaiah 40:15-31 ‘Behold your God: part 2’
Sermon, 12th June
Isaiah 40:1-14 ‘Behold your God: part 1’
Sermon, 5th June
Minister’s Letter May 2016
May 29, 2016 By
Dear friends,
My late father would have been 86 on 13th April; my sisters were quick to remind me, but I hadn’t forgotten. I had been listening to some Nat King Cole ballads on my ‘phone. Dad liked American crooner music; artists like Nat Cole, Andy Williams, Sammy Davis Jnr. and probably a few others whose names I cannot recall. He wasn’t a perfect dad, but then we weren’t a perfect family. I appreciate all that he did for me; taking me fishing, visiting the British Open Championship on several occasions (as a boy I remember interrupting Harry Carpenter interviewing the legendary Jack Nicklaus, just for an autograph – I was none the wiser). He tried too to pass on his joinery skills to me, I wish I had listened to him. I was too busy being a geeky Dr Who/Star Wars fan – dreaming of galaxies far, far away. Who needed to learn joinery when there were galaxies to explore and daleks to defeat?
In later life he was helpful to all of us, again using his joinery skills. In early December 2005, weeks into our arrival in Brussels, one of the last things that he did for us was to rebuild the girls’ playhouse. The playhouse stood for longer than need be, for sentimental reasons, and you may have noticed that Bethany and Karalyn outgrew their playhouse a long time ago.
I usually think of the Church as an extended family of sorts; the language of family prevails in the ways that we refer to God and in how we refer to other believers as ‘brothers’ and ‘sisters’ in the Lord. The hymn ‘Brother, Sister let me serve you’ is one that I like to sing. Like our genetic family, our Church family is usually far from perfect either. What are the factors that make the Church our spiritual family?
To begin with we might think of the Church as a community of grace. The Church is borne out of God’s generous and overwhelming grace for us. We would never hear God’s call to faith unless he had shown us the fullness of his grace in the Lord Jesus Christ. Not only are we borne out of that amazing divine grace, God’s desire for us is that we treat other people in the same way that God treats us. Therefore we are to be practitioners and channels of God’s grace, showing wisdom and forbearance in how we deal with all people; this includes members of God’s family.
3 John: 1-14 ‘Unfinished business: part 2’
Sermon, 29th May
