Dear Friends,
ONE day I was surrounded by desert sand, then at night it rained and in the morning I looked onto a carpet of colour. When I woke up I was in the same place as the night before, but it looked so different. That’s what God can do!
The wilderness is a place most of us will probably say we don’t want to go, but it is the place we must be. It is the place where only a few people live, but it is the place where God is an ever present provider for those who trust.
Dear Friends,
The Giant with the whole world in his hands
God is the Giant of our lives who holds the whole world in his hands and wants us to be as BIG as Jesus in what we can do. With the biggest heart, the longest arms and the best vision everyone is loved, embraced and seen by God. No hiding in the garden or under a bushel God forgives and wants YOU to be a shining light to the world.
Dear Friends,
Love is flowing like a river!
This morning I share an image of a river flowing through the wilderness and if we follow it there will always be water by our side providing the refreshment we need.
I hope you can see that river leading through the wilderness because it overflows with living waters where there is always a welcome for you to stop for a refreshing drink or cooling rinse. If we follow the river we will never be thirsty and at the end of it we will find that Love is as vast as an ocean!
Dear Friends,
When childish things are not forgotten!
1 corinthians 13: 1-13
As a child I talked and behaved like a child. As a child I thought and reasoned like a child, but as I grew-up I was able to leave my childish ways behind me. Most of us can look back and remember the childish things we did, but not everyone can leave them in the past.
Dear Friends,
When God asks the IMPOSSIBLE
we have to make it sound possible!
Some words I have written for the end of the opening devotions of the West Midlands Synod next Saturday hit me with the power of a boxers punch this weekend: “When will we start answering the questions? When will we stop questioning the answers?”
Dear Friends,
When the Word is silent
I know there is a God somewhere!
The verse of an African American spiritual came into my head as I was walking yesterday afternoon as a timely reminder that when the Word is silent I hear music in the air and I know that there must be a God somewhere!
Dear Friends,
Is the Church falling apart or still being put together….? That’s a question I want to ask after speaking to Shellie last week and then seeing her article in the Broadway Newson Friday, “Save our Churches!”
I believe God is still putting us together as Church, but I invite you to help us reflect on this on Friday evening from 6pm. It would be great if some friends who don’t normally join us could do so this week
Dear Friends,
The Kingdom of God is so near
it is almost here…
Matthew 4: 17
We start Lent in the wilderness, but the good news, if we dare to believe it, is that the kingdom of God is near and if we repent it could soon be HERE!
Yes, it is near, but so far because so many of us must repent before it can be seen here through the will of God being done on earth as in heaven. YOU, and me, are just the beginning, but change will start from the grass roots growing up so our voices produce the words that can be scattered like seeds that find fertile soil and produce the harvest of hope for the future. That’s one of the parables that Jesus tells to describe the Kingdom of God so if your faith has been trampled into the ground, choked by the worries of life or withered in the heat of the challenging days if we repent we will find the Kingdom is near. That’s good news, isn’t it! It is near and will be here if we repent!
Dear Friends,
The Truth is written in stone!
Matthew 4: 1-4
One day, sometime in the future, a space ship will land on Planet Earth and scientists in a far away world will be excited at the possibility of finding out whether there was ever life on this dot of light in the wilderness of space.
Dear Friends,
YOUR little makes miracles happen
John 6: 5-13
I was about seven years old when I was given a clip round the ear and sent to my bedroom when I came home from the corner shop without the bread and milk I had been sent to buy. I would like to say I had given the shopping to someone in need, but I had lost the money I had been given and as a family we couldn’t afford to lose it!