blog

  • Just a Thought... 16 January

    Everyone likes to feel part of some kind of community. The old saying ‘it takes a village to raise a child’ would have worked out easily: in past centuries people would have asked which village you’re from. For some people ‘belonging’ may not extend beyond just their immediate family. These days we’re more likely to ‘belong’ to a neighbourhood or support a sports team… and parents can feel very much left to themselves in raising children, relying on the school to provide the community. Sadly, a growing number of people don’t feel like they...

  • Just a Thought... 9 January

    All of us like to try and justify ourselves: the sense that we need to ‘do’ stuff to make people accept us. We talk about being accepted for who we are, knowing we are all works in progress – yet retain a nagging doubt that relationships are fragile. This may be most obvious when it comes to God: the sense that we are not good enough to keep up with His expectations can lead us to do things that reinforce our error - we can develop religious rituals or make sacrifices that make us feel as if we’re making...

  • Just a Thought... 2 January

    I trust that as Emmanuel Church family we are praying for one another to know the Lord’s blessing in the coming year – and beyond! Nevertheless, as we enter 2024 with all of its uncertainties there is a great deal that could fill us with concern. Last Sunday evening in the last few hours of 2023 we gathered as a church and encouraged one another from Psalm 90 to have the right perspective both of where we’ve come from and also what the future holds: “Lord, you have been our dwelling place throughout all generations. Before the...

  • Just a Thought... 19 December

    Imagine having prepared to travel to a far distant land. You’re travelling alone but anticipating that all of the contact and messaging and preparations will mean you are well received. Yet on arrival you are first ignored and then rejected. They have your messages, but won’t believe those messages are from you. They’ve made preparations, but they won’t use them on you. At every point you feel misunderstood and rejected. Wouldn’t you feel sad – rejected and alone – eager simply to give up and go home? Yet, the Bible tells us, that’s what...

  • Just a Thought... 12 December

    We live in a world of bad news. As I write, the BBC homepage has articles about war, Covid, shootings, and car accidents. Closer to home, health issues, relationship breakdowns, cars not starting, and more could all get us down without the right perspective. Some “cope” by switching off the news, others suppress any emotion, still others fill their lives with busyness to escape. Perhaps, for many, Christmas is simply a good opportunity to escape for a couple of weeks. But it doesn’t last – soon January comes around and real-life hits again. As Christians, we have...

  • Just a Thought... 5 December

    I don’t like dark mornings and evenings. Especially as the winter gets going with frost and damp it seems all the more challenging to have long winter evenings…. Yet, at this time of year our culture is accustomed to putting up lights and baubles and stars to celebrate Christmas. As with so many things, people who wouldn’t claim to be Christians find themselves ‘speaking’ better than they know! Last Sunday morning as we started our ‘preparations for Christmas’ we read these amazing words from John ch 1: “4In him was life, and that life was...

  • Just a Thought... 28 November

    Many of our activities are driven by necessity, yet the way we do them can be out of habit or because our parents did it that way, or perhaps out of convenience! However, in some things the way we behave is driven by our view of the world, especially when it comes to matters of morality: lying, cheating, stealing, how we conduct relationships – are all shaped by what we believe. Last Sunday morning we saw Moses from Deuteronomy ch 6 describe a situation where a child asks their adult: “What is the meaning of the stipulations, decrees and...

  • Just a Thought... 21 November

    Those of us who are Christians have put our faith and trust in the Lord Jesus Christ, the Son of God, what He has done to save us by enduring God’s wrath in our place upon a cross and then rising from the dead in triumph giving us living hope for ever! Such a rescue plan from the LORD must have life-shaping implications for those who know Him! To put our faith in Him means trusting Him as Saviour and knowing Him as Lord. This amazing Gospel news from the New Testament of the Bible is a fulfilment...

  • Just a Thought... 14 November

    Experts tell us the shape of people’s brains is changing: from a time when school children had to ‘remember’ their 12 times table, the capitals of Europe, important historical dates and the formulae for basic physics calculations. Now it’s all available at the touch of a screen and what they have to remember is how to make that screen work! It feels like a ‘brave new world’ but our forebears would have said similar things about TVs & telephones and those before them about electricity and so on. We live in a world that is always...

  • Just a Thought... 31 October

    As Christians we can have a challenging relationship with the Old Testament Law: On the one hand we read passages like the one last Sunday morning from Deuteronomy ch 5, see the 10 commandments and realise that such a clear expression of God’s character is obviously a truth for all of time: it starts in vs 6 by tying everything that follows to “I am the LORD”! On the other hand we know the New Testament makes clear that: “Therefore no one will be declared righteous in God's sight by the works of the law; rather...