Minister’s Message – March 13, 2022

Chronic fear is bad for our health. It weakens our immune system and can cause damage to our heart, problems with our digestion, decreased fertility, accelerated ageing and even premature death. It can damage parts of our brains, impair the formation of long-term memories, play havoc with our emotion, impact our thinking and decision-making and leave us feeling so anxious that we don’t even want to leave our house. This kind of fear is like a cloud hovering over our lives; either one lying so low overhead that it threatens to plunge us into darkness, or one that is lurking on the horizon, convincing us that today’s sunshine will soon be replaced by dreary drizzle or rain.

Minister’s Message – March 6, 2022

“Exile” (Lamentations 1:1-7).

Oh Sutherland is a bonnie land,
Beyond the Moray Firth.
And Ross-shire smiles at the Western Isles,
The land of Gaeldom’s birth.
From Scrabster Bay to Mingulay,
The mighty mountains weep;
For each sad glen has been cleared of men
To make way for the great white sheep …
From every glen the silent men
Have a prayer upon their lips;
As they crouch by the sea in poverty
And wait for the white-sailed ships.
The Atlantic roar on the rocky shore
Will lull the bairns to sleep.
No more they’ll stand on their father’s land –
It has gone for the great white sheep.

Minister’s Message – February 27, 2022

We’ve all been horrified by Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. I didn’t think it would actually happen – but I was wrong. I thought that Russia would gather its forces at the border, carry out its military exercises, and generally show Ukraine that it would be very foolish for them to look towards the West, the European Union and Nato. Would that have been a show of strength, and bully-boy tactics? Yes. But a full-scale invasion on the scale we’ve seen this week? Probably not. But it’s happened, and the whole world has been plunged into nervous uncertainty. There is a real fear that we and many other countries will be dragged into a conflict which would inevitably cause misery and destruction, a war which would have no real winners, only losers.

Minister’s Message – February 6,2022

Waitrose is known as a purveyor of ‘posh nosh’, the supermarket for the middle classes. And it’s interesting to notice where it has its stores: in Pontprennau (just!), Cowbridge, Monmouth and Abergavenny but not in Ely, Grangetown or Trowbridge (so why not Llandaff or Pontcanna? Perhaps they couldn’t find a suitable site).

Minister’s Message – January 23, 2022

I can’t imagine that St Paul had much of a sense of humour. Jesus clearly did, as he gave us the slapstick comedy of one blind man leading another into a ditch; and the man who could see the speck of dust in his friend’s eye but failed to see the plank sticking out of his own. Then there’s the tiny mustard-seed which could make huge mountains leap into the sea; the wordplay of calling indecisive Peter a “rock”; the preposterous thought of a laden camel – complete with its hump – trying to squeeze through a needle’s eye; and the person who thought it was a sensible idea put a basket over their lamp. We may not find these sayings or stories very funny: but Jesus’ listeners did.

Minister’s Message – January 16, 2022

“One Spirit, many gifts, glorious service”.

I’ve never enjoyed playing football – or team sports in general. I have no ball sense and when I was at school the captains choosing the two teams used to fight for the privilege of not having me on their team! When play actually started I could only see what was going on through a haze of short-sightedness; and if the ball dared to come anywhere near me I saw it as my duty to kick away this brown and muddy object as rapidly as possible – in whatever direction I could.

Minister’s Message – January 9, 2022

I wonder how many of us do our banking online? I’m a bit of a dinosaur when it comes to technology, but I got into this quite early on and find it very convenient. I know that it has led to many bank branches closing, which is a real issue for small businesses, older people and in rural areas. However my bank has only ever had one branch in the city, and only one in Ipswich where we were before, so my conscience is clear!

Minister’s Message – January 2, 2022

I guess that most of us enjoy a good murder! Not a real one, of course – and there have been far too many tragic and shocking deaths in the last few months, including those two London teenagers just this week – but the fictional murders we read in books or watch on television, carried out in ever more ingenious and gruesome ways and investigated by detectives such as Hercule Poirot or Miss Marple. 

Christmas Message

I’ve often thought that we get the Christmas story’s timeline hopelessly muddled! For instance:

– We tell the story of the angel telling Mary about her forthcoming birth just a few weeks before Christmas, although there’s no reason to think that her pregnancy didn’t last the usual nine months (the Catholic Church gets this right with the feast of the Annunciation in March).

Minister’s Message – December 19, 2021

I wonder how we greet each other over the Christmas season – and I don’t mean with “How are you doing? Terrible weather, isn’t it”! I guess we use phrases such as “Merry” or “Happy Christmas!”; our cards might say “Season’s Greetings” or – at a pinch – “Glad tidings” or even “Yuletide cheer”; if we were American we might well say, “Happy holidays” (ugh). But perhaps the most appropriate greeting for us to use this year should be “Fear not!” That might seem surprising, but it has strong Biblical backing as it’s the greeting which the angels used all those years ago. So let’s have a think about the different occasions on which they said it.