Sunday's coming!

  
 Psalm 121 
 Luke 18:1-8 Oh Lord hear my prayer… When I call, answer me O Lord hear my prayer… Come and listen to me.   It is only natural sometimes in our lives to feel that we need answers in our prayers. We call, we wail, we weep, and we wonder if anyone is actually listening.   Perhaps as you were meant to be listening to our Bible readings you were finding it hard to concentrate. Perhaps you’ve been worrying about a member of the family – an elderly relative with health problems, or a younger one in financial difficulty; perhaps you’re worried about your own health, or fearful of the future in some other way.   Perhaps you’ve confided in someone else or maybe you’re the only one who knows what it is that you’re bothered about. With all this potential for distraction going on in our minds and in our lives, how are we meant to quieten our own voices for a moment and listen to the Bible?   I hope some of us found Psalm 121 helpful “I lif...

  This week I am going "off lectionary" and exploring harvest through Psalm 8 and Mark 10: 13-16     However many harvest festivals we have celebrated in our lives, I hope we never lose a sense of how amazing and beautiful our world is. I love to see and smell all the wonders of harvest-time: the decoration of a chapel at harvest festival, the harvested fields around us, the trees laden with fruit, and the gathering of people to celebrate.   If you need a bit more wonder in your life – I want to share with you a bit of the story of the golden mole, which I heard about on Radio 4 this week, on a short programme called ‘a carnival of animals’.   Golden moles are found in sub-Saharan Africa, so we don’t need to worry about them digging up Pembrokeshire! Their kidneys are so efficient that many species never need to drink water. Their hearing is so sensitive that they can detect the vibrations of insects moving above them, and distinguish between the ones th...

 Luke 17: 5-10 Do you remember the scene in the film “Oliver”…? Where Oliver Twist, the beautiful blond haired urchin takes his emptied bowl of gruel and asks “Please, sir, can I have some more?”. You will remember the roar of disapproval from Mr Bumble - the portly man in charge -   “MORE?!”.   Poor Oliver asks because he hasn’t enough. By contrast we celebrate having so much…   How lovely it always is to pause and celebrate harvest. Of course, we eat every day – several times a day if we’re lucky. But we don’t always remember to stop and give thanks. So today we make sure we do that.   Being surrounded with so much produce – either here in church or in our gardens and fields and shops – we realise how blessed we are, how grateful to God. And so we celebrate having enough – and then we can be generous with what we have to share with others.    The story we heard today of Jesus and the disciples might make us wonder what it mea...