Hope For Today

Dear Friends, As a child I always looked forward to Easter.  Although, if I'm honest, it was more because of the Easter break from school and, of course, there were the chocolate eggs to enjoy on Easter Sunday! Now that I've grown up a little I look forward to Easter for different reasons and it means so much more to me.  It's the opportunity to celebrate our risen Saviour and Lord, Jesus Christ. To celebrate that he won the victory over death and that we can experience the hope of an eternal life with God.  It's a time when I can celebrate and worship God with my church family and also my own family. And this year there's an extra special reason for me to celebrate the day.   My daughter, Jess, has made the decision to get baptised and it's going to take place during our Easter Sunday morning service. Of course, any time someone makes the decision to obey God and follow his command to be baptised is wonderful.  But to ...

Dear Friends, (Today I want to share with you a summary of a message I recently gave at my church.  As it's a bit longer than usual you may like to split it into two readings or make yourself a cup of tea and take the time to sit, relax and read.) Towards the end of last year I was not in a good place, emotionally or mentally and so I was advised by my G.P to attend a Stress Control Course.  T he course gave me some useful, practical information and in the last session we looked at 7 key things which help to boost our wellbeing so that we can move from languishing to flourishing. Now, while it was good, it was missing one key element – the presence of God and our relationship with him.   When he is included then there is a significant increase in my sense of wellbeing, and I can experience a life that is worth living. I’ve tweaked these 7 things so that I can share them from a biblical perspective. 1.      ...

Dear Friends, As a teenager I used to find it amusing when my Mum had to hold whatever she was reading further away from her face in order to see the words clearly.  I don't find it so amusing now that I'm needing to do the same! I've recently found a few grey hairs and the wrinkles on my face are getting more noticeable.  (Although I like to think of them as laughter lines.)  What's also scary is when I sometimes look in the mirror I see my mum's face looking back at me.  When did I begin morphing into my mother?! Society seems obsessed with body image, with being physically fit, with body size and shape and the way we look.  People can spend enormous amounts of money in order to feel good, look good and appear younger than they are.  Spending hours at the gym, perfecting a fake tan, injecting poisons into themselves and even going to the extreme of going under the knife.  All for the sake of trying to slow down the inevitable - the ag...

Dear Friends, One Sunday morning after the church service I was chatting over coffee with a lady and a mutual friend.  When she saw Jess she said that my daughter looks just like me and my friend added that we have the same character too.  She's not the first one to say how much my daughter looks like me.  I know that on several occasions I've said to Josh, my son, "Oh, you're just like your father!" when he acts in a certain way.  It's no surprise that there are these family resemblances, after all, being family means we have the same DNA.  People also say that you become like the person you live with. Not only do we all have a physical family, when we become Christians God gives us a spiritual family too, he adopts us into his family and we become children of God.  " God decided in advance to adopt us into his own family by bringing us to himself through Jesus Christ. This is what he wanted to do, and it gave him great pleasure." Ephesians 1:5...

Dear Friends, We are in the middle of having a new conservatory built.   The builders took down our old one which was small and not fit for purpose in order to build a bigger one, to give us extra living space and which can be enjoyed all year round due to a particular type of glass they are using which stops the room from being too hot in the summer and keeps it warm in the winter.   I’m looking forward to seeing the finished product, but it is taking so much longer than I’d expected.   A lot of time was spent on preparing for it, digging the foundations and other work to make it stable, so to begin with there wasn’t much to show for the hours that had gone into it.   The noise, the mess, the inconvenience will all, I’m sure, be worth it in the end. There’s not much I can do about it as I know nothing about building and so I have to leave it up to the experts and trust they know exactly what they are doing. This work reminds me of the work that Jesus i...