Methodist Bishop

The Lord said to Samuel, ‘The Lord does not see as mortals see; they look on the outward appearance, but the Lord looks on the heart.’ ( http://www.biblegateway.com 1 Samuel 16.7) On Thursday night at 8pm Helen said, 'Shall we go outside then and applaud the NHS workers?' I peered through the window and could see no visible signs of activity but we ventured to the door. 'We'll have to go to the gate,' I said, because we have quite a big turning circle in front of our house. Once we were on the roadside we found there were quite a lot of people gathered in small knots outside their homes. Our neighbours were making their way up the garden path. And then the applause began. Leeds Road is wide, and usually busy. It's normally hard to make much impact in such a big space, so I wasn't sure many people would have taken the trouble to express their solidarity and gratitude in this way, but the noise was suprisingly loud. Some of the cars passing sounded t...

Even though I walk through the darkest valley, I will fear no evil, for you are with me; your rod and your staff, they comfort me. Psalm 23.4 Biblegateway.com (NRSVA)  It is providential perhaps that last Sunday's psalm was one of the most famous in the Bible, and this is its most famous verse. None of us wants to walk through 'the darkest valley'. That is where fear and anxiety lie in wait, threatening to overwhelm us and separate us from our faith. We would all much prefer not to be wanting for anything, including toilet roll and crisps. We would prefer to lie down in green pastures on a sunny day. (Perhaps that's why so many people flocked to the park at the first sign of Spring.) We would prefer a stroll beside 'still waters', or to sit on the banks and dangle our tired feet in what a different translation of the Hebrew says are ' the waters of rest'. But 'the darkest valley' sends a shiver down the spine. We would surely much prefer to...

DOING THE RIGHT THING Live as children of light—for the fruit of the light is found in all that is good and right and true. - Ephesians 5:8b-9 http://www.biblegateway.com/ NRSV I go to Sainsbury's. The toilet roll aisle is a desert. I buy some tissues - after all they sell the same stuff at Waitrose and call it luxury loo roll. At the checkout the computer says I have tried to buy three tubes of Sensodyne. It blocks the sale but I only have the regulation two tubes. The tannoy announces, 'Hoarder at checkout number two! Hoarder at checkout number two!' A split second decision. Shall I stay and argue it out or see if I can reach the exit doors before they slide shut? Who would have believed we would come to this in the Twenty-First Century? This isn't what we looked forward to on 1 January 2000 when Cliff Richard sang The Lord's Prayer to Aulde Lang Syne and we let off maroons. How can we get through the next few months? Actually I didn't...

Luke 12:49-56 [Image of two sections of rope joined only by a thread] Can you think of a caption for this image? What about, ‘Hanging by a thread’? Sometimes wear and tear, stresses and strains, leave things hanging quite literally by a single thread. If the problem isn’t spotted in time the thread will snap, sometimes with disastrous consequences. Have you ever been in the situation where you pulled your shoelaces tight, or your bootlaces, and then realised that one of the laces had been hanging together by a thread. The minute you pulled on the lace it snapped and suddenly you had a problem, perhaps far away from home in the middle of a busy day. Not quite a disaster, but a serious inconvenience. The other day one of my trouser buttons flew off and shot across the room. That’s what I mean by stresses and strains! The button was clearly under a lot of strain and I hadn’t noticed that it was hanging by a single thread. The thread broke and this time, if I hadn’t been at hom...