Sunday's coming!

Matthew 13: 31-32  This Sunday is our chapel anniversary as well as a harvest celebration. As we're currently in the middle of big changes to the building, I thought we might reflect on our 'journey so far' in the light of Jesus' parable of the mustard seed.      Reflection The kingdom of God is like a small pane of glass – which fell out of a window. And when the people in the chapel saw it they thought ‘we’d better get that mended’. But when they looked at the window they could see that all the other panes were in danger of falling out, too. And when they looked at the other windows they realised they were all in danger of falling out. And what started as a small job had become a bigger one.   And the people in the chapel got a double-glazing firm to look at the windows, and the cost of replacement was about twice as much as they had in the bank. So they contacted the Synod for help, hoping that they Synod would give them the money they n...

       Psalm 103: v1-8         Matthew 18: 21-35             We celebrate our harvest today – bringing our thanks to God for all the richness of the earth with which God blesses us every year. It is a time to give thanks and a time to rejoice in God’s love. And yet, however long we have been aware of the love God has for us, it feels as if we human beings need to keep learning what unconditional love really means.   Jesus tells this story of 2 servants and their king to try to help us grasp how God’s loving care of us all works in our lives. And yet we often call this parable the story of the unforgiving servant – and make it into a warning about how if we are unforgiving like that servant, we could get punished like him.   We hold onto the way in which the servant, who has been forgiven a massive debt, pursues a much smaller debt from another servant, because he ha...

           Ezekiel 47: 1-9     John 7: 37-39   At last.. the rain has come. In a total reversal of the usual way of things, where the rain seems to come just as the schools have broken up for the summer, we had a very sunny dry summer – including just about the whole of the school holiday – and now the rain has come for a rather damp ‘back to school’ feel.   But this year, more than ever, we have been glad to see the rain fall. Everywhere grass was looking not just dry, but bleached white – I seriously wondered whether the grass could recover. But we’ve all noticed the green shoots appear, once the rain started to fall. Life was just waiting for things to change.   The Orthodox Church has invited all churches to join them on this first Sunday of September to mark a “feast of creation” in the churches.   This marks the beginning of the season of creation, when we have our harvest festivals ...