Pause for Thought – 2 October 2020

Isaiah 61 In 1948, many thousands of Palestinian Christians were forced to flee from homes that their families had occupied for generations, when their country was partitioned, and they found themselves on the wrong side of lines drawn on maps. Most of them still live in refugee camps today. In Bethlehem, far from an idyllic…

Micah 5:2a-5a Luke 1:26-38 It’s not always for good reasons that a town or a city gets a reputation for being known.  Despite the fact there are many other reasons for thinking about Lockerbie – it’s hard not to remember the Pan-Am air crash.  When the name Dunblane is mentioned, people don’t think of the…

Luke 12:54-56 Well, it’s a Bank Holiday weekend, so by rights it really ought to be raining. I like summer – it’s my favourite day of the year.  A day without sunshine is like … night Well, in England the national topic of conversation is the weather, and many of us watch or listen to…

Isaiah 7:10-16 Matthew 1:18-25 A television interviewer was walking streets of Tokyo, where Christmas shopping is as big as it is here. The interviewer stopped one young woman, and asked, “What is the meaning of Christmas?” Laughing, she responded, “I don’t know. Is that the day that Jesus died?” The way she answered, I felt…

Jonah 3:1-5, 10 Today we heard part of a mythical tale – the story of Jonah and the big fish. It might be a true story of an historical event, but that isn’t the point. It was included in the Bible because it imparts a strong moral message: hat good will triumph over evil, the…

Ezekiel 17:22-24 Mark 4:26-34   The re-introduction of Red Kites around the United Kingdom has been one of the mazing phenomena of nature in the latter years of the twentieth century.  One thing we’ve always missed in moving to Farnham was the Red Kites that flew over Twyford, where we used to live, seemingly all…