Walking the Way: A daily devotional

Journeying Ruth 1: 1-22 Hebrews 12: 1-6 Ruth Any journey is daunting. Every journey involves risk and change. We are all on a journey. My journey as a student presbyter started about 2 weeks ago when the Methodist Conference recommended me for ministerial training. As a Church you have been on a journey as you move from being a LEP to a Church with its own identity. As Christians we are always on the journey towards our sanctification and the Kingdom of God. As Naomi contemplated what lay ahead for her I have no doubt she wondered about what she was leaving behind and heading off to. She was a Hebrew Widow in a foreign country where a woman’s status was measured by who she was married to and how many children she had. She was not a follower of the Moabite religion and so she really had no choice but to go back to Bethlehem. There was also no guarantee that there would be anyone in Bethlehem who would be able to help her. But she was not alone in her journey. Her ...

Acts 1: 9-26 I have this wonderful image that comes to me whenever I think about the Ascension. I imagine all the disciples standing there looking at the sky as Jesus goes to be with the Father. No one has noticed that they are joined by two extra people. I wonder how long they all stood there before the angels spoke to them. They would have been taken by surprise I’m sure. And then they go back to the upper room and start the process of being a Church. They start the process of becoming something completely new, in the world but not of it. They will become the greatest force for change in the world leaving a legacy that will still be standing the test of time nearly 2000 years after they have all been promoted to glory. Fast forward to 2014 and we stand on the eve of another Pentecost and I think we are still, like the early disciples, looking at the sky wondering what’s going to happen next. I often wonder where we went from being a world-changing group of people to pe...

Sermon: 06.04.14 We are quickly coming up to Easter and the most important festival in the Christian Church. The four days that make up Easter are the most pivotal in history. And in case you think I can’t count I’ve included Maundy Thursday in that as without the events before Good Friday, Easter wouldn’t exist. And it is because Easter is so important it often is called into question. The last 200 years have seen a huge assault on the authenticity of the Easter accounts with all sorts of alternatives being put forward because the Easter story is about a man who died and then rose from the dead. I have been asked if Easter really happened the way the Bible tells us it did. Was it not a legend spun out by the followers of Jesus? And so today I want to look at sharing some of the information I have learnt reading up about this very special time in the life of the Church. Before I start I am indebted to Lee Strobel and his book “The Case for Easter” in providing the starting point ...

Scripture is full of people who have taken a risk for God. In Exodus 1, we read of the Hebrew midwives who spared the lives of male Hebrew baby boys. We read of Hannah in Samuel and Esther in, well, the book of Esther. We read of Deborah, the judge, Mary Magdalene, who was the first to meet the resurrected Jesus. Lydia, the mother of Timothy. But in the 2 biblical passages (Exodus 2, Luke 2:33-35) I believe we have two of the most remarkable women in history. Both these women have helped shape the world as we know it. Both women were mothers to sons who would forever change the world. Jochebed was the name of the woman who gave birth to Moses and then in a twist of fate became his nanny. Mary was the name of the young Jewish girl who took the risk of believing God and becoming the mother of the saviour of the world: Jesus. I don’t think I need to mention what impact both men had on history. We know more about Mary than we do about Jochebed. History has been much kinder to moth...