Sunday's coming!

 Romans 12: 1-8;    Matthew 16: 13-20 It was great to be at the County Show this last week  - my fourth time.  I am almost used to the question now “which church are you at?” and have learned to answer “I’m involved in 5 chapels, all outside Haverfordwest”. The fact that I am URC - and not Church in Wales - is important to some people, and ‘chapel’ is still a useful term to help people know where I’m from. But the New Testament doesn’t use the word chapel at all, but only refers to ‘church’ - and it means neither a Medieval church nor a historic chapel - but the coming together of God’s people in the name of Jesus Christ. Ans the tent at the County Show had signs declaring we were ‘churches together in Pembrokeshire/ What does it mean to be ‘the church’ or churches together? I had fun this week putting ‘the church is like..’ into a search engine on my laptop. The church is like…     a table                 a...

           Matthew 14: 22-33, 1 Kings 19:9-18   If you ever have one of those days when you feel down and sorry for myself   - “it’s all up to me” “I’m the only one bothering…” “no-one else cares”... I recommend the life of   Elijah, and especially the part of his story we heard today.   Things are not looking too good for Elijah. The people of God have abandoned worship in favour of idols, many of God’s prophets have been killed, and Elijah is threatened too. “I alone am left” says Elijah, and he’s ready to give up.   Then the earthquake, wind and fire pass by, followed by God’s presence in the stillness. And Elijah is told to go and anoint new kings, and anoint Elisha as a new prophet – and God promises “I will leave seven thousand in Israel, who have not worshipped Baal”.   Elijah feels alone, rejected, threatened, but in fact he is NOT alone. God has a plan, and there are 7,000 people on God...