August 2023

Dear Friends Here’s your Bank Holiday news A little word And immediately the girl got up and began to walk about (she was twelve years of age). At this they were overcome with amazement. He strictly ordered them that no one should know this                                                                                                                                                                                                 Mark 5.42-43 (NRSV) In the first half of Mark’s gospel […]

Dear Friends Here’s this week’s news. A little word And looking at those who sat around him, he said, ‘Here are my mother and my brothers! Whoever does the will of God is my brother and sister and mother.’                                                                                      Mark 3.34-35 (NRSV) This reading came up this week. Jesus calls those who follow him brothers and

Dear Friends Here’s this week’s news. A little word ‘For I know the plans I have for you,’ declares the Lord, ‘plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.’                                                                                                                                         Jeremiah 29.11 (NIV) I was struck the other day how relentlessly negative the news is at the

Dear Friends  Here’s this week’s news.  A little word  What good is it, my brothers and sisters, if you say you have faith but do not have works?   James 2.14 (NRSV)  The reformer Martin Luther famously called the letter of James an epistle of straw. For the reformers in their time anything that suggested