None of us is perfect

And so, Ash Wednesday is upon us. While we as a Church do not formally acknowledge it nevertheless, from time to time it does us good to be reminded of its significance. It is the 1st day of Lent, itself a period to be set apart for prayer and fasting in preparation for the celebration of Easter. On this 1st day of Lent, we are to be reminded thus… “Remember that you are dust, and to dust you shall return.”

The Church’s 112th Anniversary

This coming Sunday, February 27th, we will celebrate the Church’s 112th Anniversary. The building itself was not built until a year later, but the group of people who had been meeting together elsewhere since November 1909, in February 1910 decided to formalise their covenanting together by constituting themselves as a Church. After that, plans were made, firstly to call a minister, and then, under his leadership for a building to be constructed during 1911.

Wars and Rumours of Wars

It is all too easy for us as Christians to recoil at the slightest suggestion of going to war. The Christian faith might well be described as ‘instinctively pacifist’. I am bound to admit that in my younger days I was ‘taken in’ by a ‘sense’ of naïve idealism – or was it, idealistic naivety – when it came to my attitude to going to war. These words of Pope John Paul 2nd served to remind me of my need to ‘come to my senses’…