Coach House Talks and Beacons

What’s your favourite season? Mine has always been summer, for multiple reasons. For example, I love the heat, so a wet summer is absolutely miserable to me. I love the long, light evenings. I love the light mornings which enable me to actually wake up without setting 5 or more alarms.

Think back to when you were at school. Maybe that's a long time ago or maybe fairly recently. Which lessons did you like and which lessons did you really want to get out of? I know that I didn't especially like the history class.

I’ve been thinking about ‘paths’ lately and I haven’t been able to get this out of my head. So many of us focus on other people and what they’re doing in life, instead of focusing on ourselves and the path God has for us.

I was reminded of something Jesus said in Luke last week. I’ve been looking after the kids in the day with Jamie and their mum being at work. Eli would come out with some random sentences but one thing that he said stuck with me. It was “You know Bekah, I love God”.

Can I ask a question? What is your view of God? Maybe, you don’t have one, maybe, if you do, it’s derived

There’s always one thing we like to talk about – the weather. It must be so boring to live in a country where every day is predictable: yet another sunny day with clear blue skies! Well, I woke up one morning recently to hear the fog horn in the distance.

I acknowledge my source for today’s Beacon as being Messianic Bible Ministries. There is an old, grand hymn entitled Holy, Holy, Holy, Lord God almighty, that was written by Reginald Heber.

Recently I went with a friend on a road trip to Romania and back. It’s a long and tiresome journey .my friend did the driving and I tried to do the navigating. As I’m here to tell the story, you can guess that it went ok . We got there and back in one piece.

I wonder if you can relate to this experience. You get worried about something, perhaps something you did, or anticipating a stressful situation, and you keep mulling it over in your mind.

Oliver Hardy, of Laurel and Hardy fame, had many great catch phrases. One of the best known of these was “That's another fine mess you've gotten us into” usually delivered towards Stan as they sat there covered in dust, water or paint, after one of their schemes had gone horribly wrong.

There is a well loved old gospel song that says, “Trust and obey for there is no other way to be happy in Jesus but to trust and obey.” These Beacons have been run-in for quite some time now.

There are those who say “I would love to have faith in God but I doubt too much” or “I would love to become a Christian but I don’t have enough faith to not doubt.” They say it as if we must have somehow blinded ourselves to our doubt in order to believe.

Now today, I’m feeling a little nostalgic. One of the films that used to be a staple diet of Christmas telly when I was a kid was the original ‘The Italian job’, not the later remake, but the 1969 Michael Caine classic

I love being on the coast any time of year. It’s obviously better in great Summer weather – a gentle breeze and clear blue skies, with uninterrupted views across the sea to the horizon. However, this is Britain and I also know that you have to savour every drop of good weather available as the perfect setting is not guaranteed for any length of time.

On Christian TV shows I have sometimes seen short street interviews in which passers-by in shopping centres have been asked if they believe anything that is written in the Bible. Almost all the time the interviewees respond negatively, and their conclusions are that the Bible is a lot of tosh

Our culture often sees Christians as “judgey”. The world thinks that we think we have all the answers and have it all together and we are judging them for how they act and what they think or say. They think that the bible is a rule book that we are meant to follow and nothing else.

It’s hard to wade into a river and keep your feet planted in the ground once you gain any depth. Eventually, you’ll swim or get swept along and there’ll be little point resisting it. While you’re on the border, the choice is still within your power, your feet aren’t sinking into the mud too deeply and you’re exercising your body to resist the current.

The recent change in the COVID restrictions around Greater Manchester have made it seem as though what we previously knew as normality is still a long way off. So much of what we considered normal was suddenly cut off and we had to change the very way we live.

A young man went into a shop to buy 3 boxes of chocolate: small, medium, and large. When the shop manager asked him about the three boxes, he said, “Well, I’m going over to a new girlfriend’s house for tea. Then we’re going out. If she only lets me hold her hand, then I’ll give her the small box.

Philippians was one of the letters written by Paul to the churches he started or was involved with. Paul was most probably in prison in Ephesus while he was writing this letter and so what he has said is even more meaningful. He wasn’t able to go out anywhere and was imprisoned unjustly for things he hadn’t done.

We race on most Saturdays during August here at Llanfwrog. We love the social interaction that this affords us, but the principle behind the racing is to raise money for the RNLI, a charity I support, and if you have listened to previous beacons … you will understand why!

A recent article in a newspaper explained how scientists –cosmologists in particular - had been able to measure energy that comes from the stars. They called it ‘cosmic background radiation .

I want us to have look at baptism, which in the Christian Church is a sacrament; the other being the Lord’s supper or communion. Baptism in water is something that new believers in Christ go through to symbolise their dying to sin and their old ungodly ways and rising to newness of life in Jesus.

A couple of weeks ago, I went on holiday by myself for a few days in Filey. Like many people, I’d become sick of my surroundings and I hadn’t gotten away properly in months. At the same time, it was a decisive opportunity for me to spend time with God, which I’d been avoiding or simply hadn’t materialised in the wake of a trash routine.

One aspect of the lock-down that some of you may have noticed has been the lack of competitive sport of television, or indeed for people to go and watch in person. This has meant that on TV and online we have had a surfeit of re-runs of great sporting moments, one of which which reminded me of a passage in the bible. We will come to the event in a moment but lets start with some words from the bib...