I wonder what promise is the one that is used most often?

It could be the promise to tell the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth. Stand inside any court in the UK and you’ll undoubtedly hear witness after witness start their testimony with this.

Or how about the promise to ‘love honour and cherish’. Doe eyed couples standing hand in hand utter these words in every marriage service up and down the country hundreds of times every week.

But both of these though are nothing compared with one promise that is constantly used millions of times every day. ‘I promise to pay the bearer the sum of…’, it’s printed next to the Queen’s head on the front of every single bank note. There are more than one and a half billion £20 notes in circulation, let alone the billions of £50s, £10s and £5s. That’s an awful lot of promises.

Originally it was possible to go into the Bank of England, hand them a bank note, and they would give you back gold of equivalent value. It’s many years since the value of sterling was pegged to the price of gold, so that’s no longer an option. But the Bank will still honour that promise and hand you other money of equivalent value for whatever note you present.

Why is the promise so important?

We put a lot of trust in what is essentially a piece pf paper. But our belief that there is something to trust behind the promise, the Bank of England in the case of UK currency, is what makes that trust greater. We know its history. We know that it has been reliable for a long time. We know that it has honoured the promises in the past. So we believe it will be so in the future.

God’s promises have been around longer. They are bigger and better. They are life changing.

In the book of Romans in the bible, we read one of God’s most astonishing promises, when the apostle Paul writes

“If you confess with your mouth that Jesus is Lord and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved.”

As we leave 2015 behind us, and look forward to 2016, my prayer for us is that this promise of God is one that we will be relying on in the coming year, and for our lives yet to come.

(January 2016)

If there had been a daily newspaper at the time of Jesus birth I wonder how it might have reported the events? A screaming headline on the front page of the Bethlehem Gazette – “Baby Boy Born In Bovine Booth”. Or perhaps in the Herod Herald “Imposter King – It’s a right royal mix up”. How about a feature article in the full colour ‘Halo’ glossy magazine. ‘“Mary and Joseph share their joy as they show us round the one room maternity suite and introduce us to their beautiful son”. Maybe it wouldn’t have deserved a mention at all. 
I’m not sure that the nativity story would have had a huge an impact in Bethlehem at the time – not enough to warrant much more than passing comment anyway. An unremarkable young woman has a baby. Some shepherds suffer from a group hallucination. A group of wealthy tourists get lost on the streets of a backwater town. Nothing to see here. The Roman census would be a much more pressing concern. 

So often everyday life gets in the way of seeing something extraordinary.

In the headlong rush towards Christmas, with all of the hubbub of the shopping for presents, the excitement of decorating the Christmas tree, the preparation of the turkey dinner, and the festive visits from family and friends, what do we miss?

Advent, the weeks leading up to Christmas, is a time that has been marked by Christians for at least 1500 years. It’s about preparation. Not of gifts or food or decoration, but of ourselves. It’s also about expectant waiting. We look for the coming of Christ – eyes and hearts open. And when we do that, there’s so much more we will see and hear. The smile on the face of a child. The tears of those who mourn. The cry of the hungry. The laughter of the joyful.

With our vision clearer and all our senses keener, the headline for this and every Christmas comes into focus. “Jesus Christ – Gift From God”.

Have a happy and blessed Christmas
(December 2015)

What is important to remember?
The names of your best friends from school? Family birthdays? Where you left your car keys? Memory experts suggest several ways which make it easier to recall important information. The same techniques can also be used to spectacular effect. Multiple times World Memory Championship winner Dominic O’Brien describes the spoken numbers challenge as one of the hardest memory disciplines. Competitors are read out strings of numbers at a rate of one a second. You have to listen to 400 of them and it’s sudden death. Most people can remember six or seven, but the current record is 364. 
Apart from the glory and acclaim given to these spectacular mental gymnasts, there is not a huge amount of real life application for recalling an hours worth of playing cards or 15 minutes of names and faces. But remembering is important
From the children’s rhymes that entreat us to ‘remember remember the 5th of November’ and Guy Fawkes attempted destruction of the houses of parliament, to Remembrance Sunday and the red poppies that recall of all those who have died at times of war, this month especially we remember the past because it has crucial things to say to the present.
Jesus himself gave his followers something to remember. On the night before he died, he shared the traditional Jewish passover meal with his friends. He took unleavened bread, he broke it and gave some to each of them. Then as the meal ended he passed round a cup of wine. 
‘This bread is my body, this wine is my blood. Every time you eat and drink these things, remember me’. We repeat these words of Jesus each time we share Holy Communion.
In among all the other things that we find difficult to find head space for, making time to recall the sacrifice of Jesus when his body was broken and his blood was shed, that’s really important.
(November 2015)

Harold Wilson, the former Prime Minister of the UK, is the man who is attributed with first saying ‘a week is a long time in politics’. The pace as which political opinion can be radically transformed is extraordinary. A pariah one moment is a messiah the next. In the digital age, where information is available as it happens can also shift public opinion with similar speed. The sea change in the press coverage of the Syrian Refugee Crisis has been remarkable.
One of the better selling tabloid papers moved from the front page alarmist headline ‘Migrants: How many more can we take?’ to describing the same situation as a ‘human catastrophe’ just six days later. Although newspaper editors might like to think that they help to form public opinion, so often they are reacting to it.
The church as the body of Christ has a responsibility to speak out at times like this, to be a consistent voice speaking of and acting out the love of God into broken lives and impossible circumstance.
Bishop Stephen Cottrell of Chelmsford Diocese has encouraged Christians to give, saying that when we do that without the expectation of getting anything back, save the joy of being blessed by serving others, we are expressing one of the fundamentals of the Christian life.
He goes on to say that our response to the Syria refugee crisis can change us for the better, not just as individuals or as churches, but also as a nation. It can shift the way we understand and discern our priorities. We recognise that we can’t do everything, but we can do something, and this ‘something’ can make a difference.
In the face of such extraordinary need, it can be difficult to know where to start, but a start is needed. Some have been collecting items to be taken to the refugee camp in Calais, others collecting monetary donations for the various Refugee Appeals. The diocese of Chelmsford has made some of its housing available, as well as a redundant church.
This crisis is not going to end any time soon – it’s time to a put Christian faith into action.
(October 2015)

Between 2009 and 2013 the number of albums in the UK that were sold on CD near enough halved from 112 million to just over 60 million. In the same time frame digital sales, on iTunes and other online retailers more than doubled. For music retailers on the High Street it was a difficult time. HMV, the ninety year old company with outlets all over the UK faced disaster, and at the beginning of 2013 it was rescued from administration but still saw significant store closures and job losses.

Somewhat surprisingly only two years later HMV is once again making profits, and has just announced it is to to open new shops across the Middle East. It is also in talks to expand into Australia, China and India. They have seen year-on-year CD, DVD and Blu-Ray sales increase by small amounts, but the real star is vinyl albums where the number sold has increased by 170%.
Why is a technology that is more than a hundred years old and was thought to be completely obsolete seeing such a revival in fortune?
At the very least it seems to be tapping into a reich vein of nostalgia. 
We so often look back at the past and remember bigger baked bean tins, cheaper petrol, children who respected their elders, and all sorts of other things that were ‘better’ back then. 
For the church, there is also the temptation to see the past as a golden age of Christianity. A time when pews were full and there was a vicar riding his bike through every parish calling on all and sundry for a cup of tea and a natter. And maybe a time when God had more impact as well.
I’m fairly certain that’s not the case. People aren’t less interested in God or spiritual things now, probably the reverse. It’s just they have discovered how many different places there are that they can look. As Christians we need to be prepared to continue to make Christ known without dwelling on the past. That doesn’t mean we can’t look back and learn. It just like driving. It’s important to check in the rear view mirror to remind yourself what’s behind you. It’s absolutely vital that you look forward to see what might be coming up ahead.
(September 2015)

Alongside sandcastles, donkey rides and ice creams, rock is part of any good summer seaside holiday. These multi-coloured sticks of confectionary wonderfulness involve the careful mixing of sugar, liquid glucose and various colouring, and then after a process of twisting and turning and pulling and stretching, the final product is formed. Having kept dentists in business for many years rock is as popular now as it ever was. 

It’s not only the brightly coloured sugar that make up a stick of rock, it often features the name of the seaside town or resort as part of the rock itself. Not just lettering on the outside, the letters run right through its middle. Every bite you take from one end to the other and there it is.   

There’s a story in the Old Testament in the bible that describes how the prophet Samuel is sent by God to look for a new king. He knows that it is one of the sons of a man called Jesse. One by one Samuel is introduced to Jesse’s sons, each tall, strong and handsome and looking every inch a king. But each time God tells Samuel that they are not the one that he is searching for. Eventually after some persuasion, Jesse calls his youngest son in from tending the sheep out in the fields and brings him to Samuel. This is David, and much to Samuel’s surprise, God says that he will be king.

Samuel may have been surprised, but God explains how he works

“Man looks at the outside”, says God, “but I look at the heart”

Whatever public face is presented to the world, God knows exactly what’s going on behind it. There’s no pretence with God. Nothing is hidden. Our motivations may be a secret to everyone else, but not to God.

If we could look inside ourselves, I wonder if we would see God’s name written all the way through, just like in a stick of rock?

(August 2015)

There have been some recent press articles about the difficult nature of at least one of the GCSE exams this summer. One recorded how students had left their EdExcel Maths paper and taken to social media to complain that one of the questions was ‘impossible’. The truth of the matter was that it was indeed very difficult, but for the most mathematically able of the students it was solvable. 

Another more amusing account came from the GCSE Chemistry paper, where a short teaser posed to students near the beginning asked them to finish the sentence ‘Limestone is Calcium ______’. If there was any doubt over the answer from those taking the exam, a cursory glance through the rest of the paper would have helped considerably. One of the questions further on began with the statement ‘Limestone is Calcium Carbonate.’

It was a show of uncharacteristic magnanimity from the exam board.  

Those who read the bible can have similar experiences. For some it is a mystery, confusing and impenetrable. For others it contains the answers to any question you care to throw at it, if only you study it with enough care and for long enough. Neither of those really gets to grips with what the bible is.

From a time when only those with years of learning and knowledge of Hebrew and New Testament Greek could speak with clarity about the bible, we now have umpteen varied translations in English. They all have something to commend them. From the beauty of the 400 year old King James Version, which has contributed so much to our culture, to the Good News Bible, with its turn of speech that has a great deal more modern tone to it. Each enables us to hear God speak through ancient words. 

It may not be the place you go to to find answers to what’s the best thing to eat, what holiday destination might be good, or if your choice of wall colour is truly holy.

But for a glimpse into the mind of God, and the story of his promise of hope to a broken world, there’s no better place to start.

(July 2015)

I caught a show on one of the more obscure television channels recently with the title ‘Day of Gluttony’. The premise of the programme is that over the course of twenty-four hours, the hosts, Harry and Bruce, visit 24 eating establishments in a particular city. Thankfully for their state of health, they don’t actually have a meal at every stop. Alongside restaurants there are also milkshake shops, juice bars, and for me the most interesting, coffee roasters. 

The choice of coffee that is available at these places can number as many as a dozen or more. Each of the beans is roasted in house before being lovingly brewed into a cup of steaming hot deliciousness. The hosts don’t know what these coffees are going to taste like before they take their first sip, but they seem to revel in the opportunity of trying something new, something different, something unusual. There’s always the possibility that they may well find the perfect cup.

It’s a world away from the larger chains that are so prevalent in high street stores up and down the UK. One of the main selling points for these places is that you know what you’re getting. Not so many years ago, a spokesman for a major fast food retailer boasted that their signature burger tasted the same whether you were in Beijing or Basildon. Coffee at our nation’s favourite coffee establishments is served in a similar vein.

God is sometimes pictured in a similar way.

He is unchanging, immutable, abiding and eternal – the same whenever and wherever we are. Which in itself as far as God goes, seems like a good thing to me. But at the same time, the prophet Isaiah records God as saying that he is ‘doing a new thing’. How can God, who is changeless, do something new and different?

It’s all about the way in which he acts. God is love, so his actions are always those of a loving God. That doesn’t mean that he will do the same specific things time and time again. But those things he does do are always informed and inspired by the love he has for his creation. He is consistently loving.

And his people, the church, are called to do the same in the way we act out our faith.

We use both ancient and new words in our prayers. We sing timeless hymns and modern songs of worship. We try to love others as God has first loved us. We also recognise that although our culture changes, the God we worship remains the same. And that’s something worth thanking him for. Ideally over a large mug of extra strong coffee.

(June 2015)

If you’ve ever spent any time in an Anglican church, you may well have noticed the colours that are used in the building change throughout the year. Sometimes there is purple. This is used during the weeks leading up to Christmas and also in Lent, those weeks before Easter. There is white at Easter itself and also at Christmas. Red is only seen occasionally, at Pentecost and perhaps on Good Friday or Palm Sunday. The most common colour though is green. For the vast majority of the year, green is the colour that you’ll find adorning various parts of a church building.

This is known as ‘ordinary time’, and marks the passing days and weeks between the most important dates in the Christian calendar.

Calling it ‘ordinary time’ does it something of a disservice. ‘Ordinary’ can infer boring or dull. Routine or humdrum. Something to be gotten through before returning to excitement and adventure.

Certainly for some people, they spend much of their time looking forward to future events rather than enjoying the present. Gifts at Christmas or chocolate at Easter, anticipation of an upcoming anniversary or significant birthday. On the 25th of January every year, a friend of mine in Kent would gleefully whisper in my year “11 months until Christmas!” But waiting for the next big thing is not what marking the changing of the seasons of the church year is intended to do.

The colours in the church are also reflected in some of the clothes that a priest wears when they are leading a service of Holy Communion. The scarf or stole that they wear will mirror the colour in the church. Of my various stoles, most of them are fairly plain, predominately white or purple or red, but with a simple motif of a cross or a dove on either end, depending on the colour. My green stole though has painted on it trees with fruit, a Heron(!) and running from side to side a stream of bubbling water. There is something joyful about both the image, and the time that it marks.

There is always extraordinary to be found in the ordinary – we just need to stop and look around at the world God has given us to live in.

(May 2015)

I wonder if you have ever found out something surprising and unexpected about someone that you thought you knew really well? Maybe you have an aunt who unknown to you was once a downhill skier in a winter olympics. Or perhaps you have second cousin who behind their mild mannered exterior, is actually an operative for MI5. 

Sir Isaac Newton was an English physicist and mathematician who formulated the laws of motion and universal gravitation – supposedly inspired by having an apple drop on his head. He built the first practical reflecting telescope and developed a theory of colour from observing the decomposition of white light through a prism. There are also stories that among his huge scientific achievements and contributions to our understanding of our world, Newton played a significant part in the homes of thousands and thousands of people. He invented the cat flap. 

The story goes that Newton spent many hours on his light experiments, only to have them ruined when his pet cat nudged the door to his lab open. Newton loved his cat and didn’t want to shut her out so his solution was to cut a hole in the door. He attached a of piece of felt at the top which hung down over the hole so as little light possible would get through. 

There are all sorts of things that we can say about Jesus that aren’t that surprising. Even in this post-Christian era, the accounts of his life are fairly well know. Born in Bethlehem. Lived in Galilee. He was firstly a carpenter, then a travelling preacher and teacher. His words of comfort and strength for the poor and the dispossessed upset the religious leaders of his day who had him killed for his trouble. His death on a cross has left it’s mark on our world and his life has inspired millions of people in the years since his feet walked upon the earth. 

The shocking thing is that for these same millions, his death wasn’t a disappointing finish. A downbeat note that closes an upbeat song. We believe that his death was not the end as this man Jesus was and is the Son of God, and three days after he died, he was seen alive by many hundreds of different people. 

This is the unexpected Easter story. That life that is eternal is not only possible, but a wonderful promise made by a risen Jesus to all that love and follow him. 

(April 2015)