Sunday 10th February – Old dogs & new tricks – Judah

Is character change possible, even in people of a mature age? What sort of man who would sell his own brother into slavery, and then persuade their father that the boy had been eaten by wild animals? Who would sleep with a prostitute but then, finding his widowed daughter-in-law to be pregnant, supposedly as the […]

Sunday 3rd February – Unlikely women #4 – Tamar

Tamar, this week’s “unlikely” woman, is one you probably won’t have heard about in Sunday School! Her story will probably shock you but it has lots to teach us about sin & punishment, grace & forgiveness, men & women, and about how none of us are too “unlikely” for God’s plans.

Sunday 27th January – Unlikely women #3 – Bathsheba

The next “unlikely” woman on Jesus’ human family tree – as listed in Matthew chapter 1 – is Bathsheba, the widow of Uriah the Hittite and the mother of Solomon. Why was Bathsheba having a bath in sight of the palace? Why did King David succumb to temptation? Who murdered Uriah, and why? And how […]

Sunday 20th January – Unlikely women – #2 Ruth

Ruth is a star

Apart from Mary, Jesus’ mother, only four other women – unlikely women, as we might see them – are given a place of honour in the list of Jesus’ human forebears, in Matthew chapter one. We thought about Rahab of Jericho, in the first two of our series on the book of Joshua, back in […]

Sunday 13th January – The Gospel comes with a house key

I was flicking through a resources booklet that came with the Christmas publicity materials that we’d got from CPO (the Christian Publicity Organisation, based in Worthing), and I was struck by the title of one of the books listed: “The Gospel comes with a house key”, by a writer called Rosaria Butterfield. The initial blurb […]

Sunday 6th January 2019 – Carry on growing

Keep calm and carry on growing

Please don’t think that you’ve come as far as you possibly can, that you’ve grown as much as you can, that you’ve reached your peak and that there’s nothing new, nothing more in store for you. That’s not what God says to any of us. Throughout the Bible, we read that God’s desire is for […]

Sunday 30th December – End of the year

New year

We are at the end of the year. All round the world, tomorrow, people will be celebrating the New Year – 2019. But what are we actually supposed to be celebrating? The 1st of January doesn’t mark anything special in the Earth’s orbit; it isn’t one of the equinoxes;  New Year celebrations haven’t even always […]

Sunday 16th December – The Wise Men’s gifts

With only 9 days to go until Christmas, even the most Scroogey and Grinchy of us must admit that it’s time to put up the decorations, write some cards and make sure we’ve bought all the gifts we need to. Today, we look at the gifts the Magi brought to offer to Jesus. Why did […]

Sunday 25th November – Certainty in uncertain times

You probably haven’t got to be whatever age you are without realising that not much in life is really certain. We live amidst uncertainty and yet, in our worship times, we declare that God is eternally loving and faithful. Our songs declare a certainty that we don’t see in the world around us. Today we look […]