Turn the Page

Henry Morrison and his wife were thrilled to see huge crowds and a band playing on the New York Harbour quayside. After 40 years of service on the mission field of Africa Henry turned to his wife and said, ‘They haven’t forgotten us.’ But the crowds weren’t there for Henry. President Roosevelt was on the same ship returning after a three-week hunting trip. The welcome was for him. Henry and his wi...

To lose a child is every parent’s worse nightmare. Such was the experience of Nadim Ednan-Laperouse in 2016. He was flying to Nice on holiday with his daughter Natasha when she developed a severe allergic reaction. Despite the best efforts of those on board she died in his arms. It is the kind of experience that causes many to reject the idea that there could be a God. But that’s not what happened...

Well I’m sorry to spoil all those lovely nativity plays but it turns out much of the story we tell is based on fake news. It’s more than likely that Jesus wasn’t born in a stable and there was no inn and no innkeeper telling Mary and Joseph ‘no room!’ A traditional middle eastern house only had one room where both people and animals lived together. They might also have had a small additional room...

My sister-in-law, a professional musician, was married three days after Christmas. The Church was still beautifully decorated including a crib scene with real straw and knitted figures. But shortly before the service was about to begin sad news arrived. Due to the cancellation of his flight the friend who would play violin during the signing of the registers was not going to arrive in time. Fortun...

Speaking with remarkable foresight the President of the Pacific Telephone and Telegraphy Company, Mark Sullivan, gave this prophecy in 1953: ‘In its final development, the telephone will be carried about by the individual, perhaps as we carry a watch today. It probably will require no dial or equivalent, and I think the users will be able to see each other as they talk.’ At the time people must ha...

Many years ago, my brother and sister were at Victoria station in London waiting for a train to Brighton. They sat on a bench watching the train on the platform for some minutes. As it began to pull out my sister turned to my brother and said, ‘I think we could have got that train.’ History doesn’t record my brother’s response, but I suspect it was something along the lines of, ‘Why didn’t you say...

It’s thirty years since British engineer and scientist Tim Berners-Lee created the world wide web. Marking the anniversary, he’s called for a mid-course correction. In a telling indictment of human nature, he said that the web was now so full of disinformation and harmful content, that it was plunging ‘towards things which could be really bad.’ He went on to say that social media content was now t...

In May 2019 four drunk schoolboys went on a rampage and destroyed the life’s work of the Market Deeping Model Railway Club. In just a few minutes the £30,000 display was ruined leaving the club’s members heartbroken. It looked as if their years of hard work had been lost forever. But six months on and the display has been restored to its former glory. Crowdfunding raised over £100,000 and twenty-f...

The next time you flush your loo spare a thought for the billions around the world who have don’t have that luxury. It’s a big problem leading to the deaths of hundreds of thousands from cholera, diarrhoea and dysentery, and a big problem requires a big solution. So thank God for those like Bill Gates who are investing huge sums to invent a toilet that doesn’t need water. His Tiger Toilet launched...

When I was growing up in the 1970’s there were essentially only two ways to contact someone you weren’t actually sitting next to. You could either write a letter and wait days for a reply, or call them on a landline telephone and hope that they were in (because if they weren’t there was no way of leaving a message.) These days my children scoff at the idea of using a landline and rarely if ever wr...

The UK has just embarked on yet another general election. Once again, the airwaves are full of promises with political parties pledging to spend billions on education, healthcare, and housing. But in a world now dominated by ‘fake news’ we’re deeply cynical that once the election is over many of them will be forgotten. But maybe we have reason to be more hopeful. In 2017 a study of 12 European and...

On 6th June 1964 General Eisenhower returned to Omaha Beach in Normandy. Twenty years earlier 2,000 men had lost their lives on the same beach securing it for the Allied invasion on D-day. Eisenhower looked out at the holidaymakers swimming in the sea and enjoying the sunshine and commented, ‘It’s almost unreal to look at it today and remember what it was, it just shows what free men will do rathe...

One of the loveliest things you notice about the life of Jesus, is how often he would stop a whole crowd of people to focus on just one person. Nearly always they were people marginalised by the majority because of some illness or sin – a woman who’d run up five marriages, a selfish tax-collector, another woman ostracised from her community by 12 years of unstoppable menstrual bleeding, and a blin...

Aside from the fact that it’s a commercially driven enterprise earning millions of pounds for big business, it strikes me that there’s something deeper going on in our culture’s ever-expanding celebration of Hallowe’en. The Bible nails it with this verse from John’s Gospel, ‘Everyone who does evil hates the light, and will not come into the light for fear that their deeds will be exposed.’ Most of...

Driving in Lahore is an experience not to be missed! The roads are crowded with cars, motorbikes, donkeys, tractors, tuk-tuks, trucks and buses, some of them roadworthy. Lines on roads and traffic lights offer suggestions about the rules of the road but the rule of thumb seems to be that if there’s a gap you should take it. One particularly interesting journey involves taking a short-cut across a...

On 12 th  October 2019 yet another milestone in human achievement was passed as Eliud Kipchoge became the first person in the world to run a marathon in under two hours. Before the event Kipchoge said that if successful his achievement would rank alongside that of being the first man on the moon, and there’s no doubt that like moonwalkers sub-two-hour marathon runners will always be few and f...

As with all the best stories it’s often the very moment when all hope seems to be lost when the clouds part and the sun breaks through once more. With the Brexit deadline approaching like a runaway train, it’s just possible that a conversation between two key leaders may have changed everything.  I’m reminded of a scene from the film version of CS Lewis’s famous tale The Lion, The Witch and T...

A few weeks ago I injured my back lifting Jesus onto the cross. Clearly this wasn’t the real thing but a dramatized re-enactment. Somehow with just a director, a cast of sixteen and two days to rehearse we presented Mark’s Gospel in just 90 minutes. It was a deeply profound and moving experience. But I’m left with backache and every time I now twist or bend I’m instantly taken back to the crucifix...

I’m ending the month of September by paying a speeding fine incurred while on holiday in France over the summer. Up until 6 th  May 2017 I could have left this particular ‘sin’ behind at the border and would never have known anything about it. But on that date EU rules changed allowing nations to access one another’s vehicle ownership records and send fines to foreign nationals. My ‘sin’ foll...

This week Chinese social media influencer Lisa Li has been called out by her landlord for the contrast between her online life how she actually lives at home. With over a million followers Li has posted about her glamorous lifestyle with its glossy catalogue of foreign travel, wild parties and fine dining. But after several failed attempts to make contact with her, her landlord did some posting of...

These days there’s no excuse for oversleeping. You can set an alarm on your phone or bedside clock or even arrange for the phone to ring with a wakeup call. But what did people do before the widespread availability of watches, clocks and electricity? They used a ‘knocker upper’.  A common sight in British mining villages, mill towns and docks until the 1970’s, the ‘knocker uppers’ were p...

I remember many years ago the agonising pain of being in a relationship that had broken down. There was nothing I could do to restore it. Then one day I received a text message with just the words ‘I miss you.’ Suddenly everything changed. A corner had been turned and now there was hope that the relationship could be restored. Mark’s Gospel records a similar event where just two words signal the r...

Speaking about the security arrangements for the latest artwork installation at Blenhiem Place, Edward Spencer-Churchill declared, ‘It’s not going to be the easiest thing to nick.’ Sadly, he was proved wrong as the 18-carat gold toilet was stolen in the early hours of 14 th September 2019. The toilet, called ‘America’, was fully functional and visitors were invited to use it as long as they could...

Police Scotland recently tweeted, “September is preparedness month. Emergencies can happen at any time and it’s recommended to have a #GrabBag ready containing essential items including medication, copies of important documents, food/water, torch, radio and other personal items.” The tweet caused some concern with a number worried that it might cause unnecessary panic, not l...

In a famous parable explaining God’s love for the world, Jesus told a story about two brothers, the younger of whom rejects his father, demands his inheritance early and then goes and blows the lot on wild parties. Finding himself reduced to feeding pigs he sets off home in the hope of re-entering the household as a servant, only to be welcomed back by his father as a child once more. The story is...