Thought for the Week

‘No restrictions on communal worship.’ That’s how the news broadcasts are describing the situation in England. And that is good news we’d all say! I’m waiting for the fine print from the GOV.UK website to know whether there are any caveats. We wait and see. In the meantime, however, is it true that there are […]

My devotion at yesterday’s Reading Day … The Lord be with you. [Read 1 Corinthians 12:31 – 13:13] This reading is found in the 3 year lectionary and in the one year lectionary so it must be worth hearing where Paul is writing to his fractious congregation – a former missionary pastor writing to people […]

Ecclesiology. It means words about the ecclesia which is a group of people – in ancient Greece, it was about civics and politics, a group of citizens – and it is a word that has come to be used in the Church to describe the people of God and how they are Church and how […]

I was surprised. The moment was unexpected and my reaction was quite visceral. I felt it in my gut – a shock – so that I noticed it and yes, it achieved what it set out to do – make me think and check my behaviour. What am I talking about? I was driving and […]

I had organised online to pick up a prescription and went to the dispensary to collect it only to be told that there had been an error online and the prescription wouldn’t be ready for another two days. Please come back then. But the trouble was I wouldn’t be able to – and quickly working […]

Force Majeure? I was doing some reading of contracts for the ELCE and wading through the ‘fine print’ so to speak. Yes, there are acts, events, or circumstances beyond the control of those in the contract which can’t reasonably be anticipated or controlled (eg. extreme weath-er, war, terrorism) and which affects the contract and generally […]

The 26th European Lutheran Conference was delayed in 2020 because of C-19 and dis-tanced but digital in 2021. Members of the European Lutheran Churches with which the EL-CE are in church fellowship – Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Norway, and Portugal – and guests from Lutheran Churches in the Czech Republic, Finland, Spain, and Switzerland – […]

When people say that they don’t believe in Jesus, I often don’t understand what they mean. Are they saying that they don’t believe Jesus ever existed? (That he is fiction.) Do they think the same thing about Plato, Julius Caesar, Michelangelo, or any one else from the long ago past? Are they saying that Jesus […]

I discovered recently that I might be suffering from ‘illusionism’. The fact that I believe in a reali-ty beyond my senses and therefore that life after death exists is probably quite a give-away! In this case, though, the phrase refers more to the wrestling that goes on where physics, philoso-phy, and neuroscience converge to say […]