Andy B Podcasts and Stuff

Send us Fan Mail Hope can sometimes feel like a premium we’ll never be able to afford.  With rising energy costs – 80% in the UK, and that’s just the most recent rise – it can truly appear terrifying to look ahead.  As Christians we are, of course, not immune from the struggles of this world. Yes, we have a world creating God who loves to answer our prayers. However, He is not a distant magician w...

Send us Fan Mail During the Second World War there were posters with “Do Your Part” These were more commonly used by the US to seek to inspire American women to get involved in the war effort, from the Home Front – working in machine shops, factories, farms and wherever they were needed. They didn’t go to fight, but they did support those doing so. During COVID we saw similar campaigns with slogan...

Send us Fan Mail For my birthday, recently, my family bought me a new keyboard for our ministry computer. It’s an amazing thing because it is ergonomic. While the layout of the keys may be what you’d expect, the layout of the whole of the keyboard certainly is not. And, as someone who has done an awful lot of typing, this is no easy switch!! I remember doing a computer course on how to use a mouse...

Send us Fan Mail I’m back! I hope you’ve missed these short daily reflections on life. I’ve certainly missed making them! I took a pause because I’d been doing them, without any proper break, for nearly two years and I wanted to pause long enough to have a rest so I could come back refreshed. But, only to do so if I felt God was wanting me to continue with them, which I believe He does. So here we...

Send us Fan Mail Well, that’s it - this is my 100th episode of Andy B 2 Minute Videos in this current season (and my 148th overall). We’ve only recently reached 1,000 posts across the BerryBunch, and now I’ve just finished my 100th episode of my weekday thought provokers. It’s a moment to celebrate what I’ve been able to do by the guiding, and providing, of God. With this current season we saw the...

Send us Fan Mail On the floor of our studio, for about 2 weeks, has been a tiny piece of black foam. I knew what it is – the foam cover from a pair of small headphones. But the studio floor is also a fairly busy place, so I left it, and then forgot about it and, then, well, rinse and repeat until I make an Andy B 2 Minute Video out of it! Eventually I worked out who it belonged to when I spotted J...

Send us Fan Mail The UK has seen a terrifying increase in costs for heating and cooking. In the middle of summer, heating seems like something to not worry about. But the latest estimates are that a family who are paying £300 in the summer, will be paying £500 by October and £550 by January. As a family we were only paying £100 at the start of the year. That’s a five fold increase! In the midst of...

Send us Fan Mail Kindness doesn’t have to be something we reserve for special occasions. It doesn’t have to cost us everything we have either, but it will always cost us something. At the time of writing there’s proof of the need for kindness in our world as a former South African satanist - of many years - recently became a Christian. Why? Because of an unprompted act of kindness from someone he...

Send us Fan Mail I was cycling the exact same route for several days in a row. However, the wind direction – and speed – changed each day. I went from having a tail wind on a stretch of road one day, to a head wind on the same section of road the next. I saw my average speed double with the wind behind me, and drop to half when it was against me. It was quite noticeable! If we always help people w...

Send us Fan Mail Today's topic idea was sponsored by Devotional Treasures: Alan suggested I use a tin opener as a hook for an Andy B 2 Minute Video, so here it is. There is a particular tinned meal which can be rather popular in the BerryBunch household. We eat it seldom, but MAN IS IT GOOD! It’s simply a pie you bake in an oven, in the tin it comes in. In very clear instructions, on the back...

Send us Fan Mail I’ve always said that perception trumps reality. It doesn’t matter what the truth may be, if our projected image doesn’t back it up. And the bible tells us that we shall be known by our fruits – it’s the basic underlying principle that lifted up the widow who emptied her purse against the rich man who gave so much, but only a tiny portion of what he had. As Christians it’s easy to...

Send us Fan Mail Washing machine companies spend an eye watering amount of money on advertising. I cringe as I remember some of the adverts on TV in the 80s and 90s. But, not, perhaps for the reasons you may think. Although, saying that, some of those adverts truly dreadful. Not all that long ago the BerryBunch ran a high street shop - we sold everything eco-friendly, including alternatives for wa...

Send us Fan Mail Someone tried to steal some signalling cable for train lines in the UK along an 8 mile stretch of railway. This created a huge problem as trains were cancelled all together, or simply delayed by 2 hours or more. As you moved away from the centre of where the problem began, those issues simply grew, exponentially! At one train station one particular man had finally boarded a train,...

Send us Fan Mail Life can be pretty challenging sometimes, especially when what you first thought was a pleasant day changes, dramatically. Now, you’re not just walking up a mountain enjoying the view, but you’re fighting for your life as freezing fog or a heavy downpour suddenly envelopes you, snow falls and you realise you didn’t bother to bring any emergency survival gear because it all looked...

Send us Fan Mail Good things and bad things. They make up our lives! And it’s easy to want to forget about the bad things, especially those mistakes we made that we don’t want anybody else to ever know about. We can accomplish, some of the time. But, there are some mistakes that are impossible to hide from others. And there is nothing we can ever hide away from God. While it may seem like a great...

Send us Fan Mail Stress can hit us in different ways. And one of the symptoms I’ve often experienced myself, or seen in others, is that of confusion. You can be racing through life one moment and, the next, wonder you’ve just put the milk in the cupboard and the tea bags in the oven. That, right there, is confusion, and too much stress can leave you in that situation. As Christians we are absolute...

Send us Fan Mail “Road Closed”. It’s a simple sign in the UK.  It is a big, unmistakable sign – in red, with bold white letters. It means you can’t go any further in your car, without, essentially, permission - such as you live or work beyond it. But, to most people, it is the end of your journey along that road, because you are not allowed to proceed any further. Near our home is a beautiful loca...

Send us Fan Mail When people say well done, do you try and deflect that compliment? I know this is something I’ve always struggled with! I’ve led worship for more than 3 decades. Ever since the age of 11 I’ve been part of the worship group in a church, leading worship to children, or adults, or both. By the age of 15 I was leading worship in a church of 350 to 400 people, and a worship group behin...

Send us Fan Mail Bilbo Baggins is something of a hero, if you know anything of Lords of the Rings. And there is a line he utters which is wonderfully descriptive! He mentions about how tired he has become, and he likens his tiredness to ‘butter spread over too much bread’. To be fair to Bilbo, he had long gone past his natural oldest age, but that description paints a great picture of how life can...

Send us Fan Mail When you’re playing cards you can wish a better hand, as much as you like. But, at some point, you have to accept the cards you’ve been dealt. And it is much the same in life. We can wish for a better car, a better job, a better house, a better retirement plan, better health. But wishing just pushes us deeper into a place of being sad and depressed. Wishing doesn’t change what is....

Send us Fan Mail Life can be full of struggles. Some can be good – like the effort needed to build muscle in a gym. The struggle feels good, because we can – possibly slowly – see a positive difference to our bodies. Some struggles can be bad – like grieving a loved one when we’re not ready to say goodbye to them, or having to live with life changing injuries from an accident that was not our faul...

Send us Fan Mail When carrying out some rather widespread and deep website building work, Nathan and I ran across a really odd problem to have! Because, every time we loaded one video, another one kept on displaying instead. After something of a panic, since it seemed to affect every video we had been working on, I thought about clearing the cache - for our internet browser. If you’re more compute...

Send us Fan Mail One of the most powerful words in the English language has just two letters in it.  It begins with the letter “N” and ends with the letter “O”. As Christians we can be under so much pressure to say yes to everything, and church leaders can be notorious for forgetting that the people who are giving of their time to serve in churches, how ever important that particular ministry may...

Send us Fan Mail It’s so easy to look at someone and make a snap judgement based on what we see, or perhaps what we smell. For example, if we smell a super expensive perfume, we may well label that person as “wealthy and important”. But if they smell as though they haven’t had a wash for a few weeks, we might assign a label of “dirty and homeless”. Both labels may be true, but they don’t help us a...

Send us Fan Mail While filming some new material I made one small mistake, and gave one file the wrong title. When looking through the files on the computer later, I realised it had caused a whole bunch of files to now appear to be incorrectly labelled. After spending some time trying to sort it, I realised I really needed a second set of eyes looking at the problem, so called in my middle son – N...