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This summer I was invited to attend a Speed Awareness Course! With some irony this was the result of lockdown. As the world slowed and the roads emptied a unique opportunity arose – that of approaching the Dartford Tunnel without having to slow down and join the back of a queue. On the course we were asked to think about why we’d been travelling too fast and how we’d make sure it didn’t happen aga...

During the summer months moths and bees are regular visitors to my bedroom. The moths are drawn to the brightness of my bedside light and bees have made a nest in the flat roof above. On the one hand the moths seem restless and uncertain, endlessly approaching the light but never actually landing on it. By contrast the bees are focussed and busy. In the morning they fly out looking for flowers and...

For two thousand years Christians have prayed ‘Your Kingdom come, Your will be done, on earth as it is in heaven’. But hang on a minute. Doesn’t that imply that God’s will isn’t being done on earth at the moment? What does that say about belief in an all-powerful, all-loving God? If he’s as good and compassionate as Christians claim, then why doesn’t he just impose his will on us and make the worl...

Johnny Depp’s current libel case reminds us how unpleasant it is when someone’s character and behaviour are misrepresented. Not many of us need a jury to decide the merits of our case; but most of us can remember a time when someone said something about us and we thought, ‘that’s just not me’. Richard Dawkins dismisses the character of God as described in the Old Testament as ‘the most unpleasant...

Fans of the Shakespearean-inspired comedy ‘Upstart Crow’ will be familiar with the exclamation ‘hang the futtock on’. It often comes at a moment when the playwright is struggling to find inspiration for his next play and suddenly realises that current events provide the perfect plotline. It’s a moment when the penny drops. But the comedy only works if the audience recognise the actual Shakespearea...

It’s often supposed that the Bible is rather old-fashioned and irrelevant. So quite a surprise to discover that St Paul seemed more than familiar with Zoom calls. Speaking to a church in the ancient city of Corinth he says, ‘Now we see but a poor reflection; then we shall see face to face’. Over the last three months most of us have grown used to Zoom and are very grateful for it. Forced apart fro...

A few years ago, a damp patch suddenly appeared in the middle of our lawn. Being me, I didn’t do anything about it and just hoped it would go away. But it didn’t. Over the years it got worse. One particularly dry summer a small frog made its home there while the rest of lawn went brown. Then lockdown happened and I found myself spending a lot of time in the garden. I realised that not only was the...

The reopening of hairdressers in England will come as a huge relief to many. Worrying about what to do with our hair has been one of the pressing issues of lockdown. There seem to have been three options. Firstly, do nothing and just stick it out. Secondly, let a family member have a go, after all how hard can it be? Thirdly, do it yourself. On the basis that if it all went horribly wrong, I wasn’...

It’s the oldest objection to God in the world, most recently expressed to me as follows: ‘God has watched while thousands have died during the pandemic; exactly as he did during two World Wars, the Holocaust, and the Rwandan and Bosnian genocides. He didn’t do a thing because he doesn’t exist.’ But just for a moment let’s consider what we gain by denying the existence of God. Does it make any diff...

Since the beginning of lockdown, the UK government has racked up £300 billion in debt, providing extra resources for the NHS and furloughing millions of workers. I’m told that the last time this happened was in 1835. On that occasion slavery had just been abolished and the money was used to compensate slave owners for their loss. The final bill came to near enough £300 billion and it took a long t...

My father died from cancer when I was just a year old. I have no memory of him whatsoever, although for a year I must have heard his voice and felt the warmth of his embrace. Then one day he just vanished from my life. Later during my school years my friends would sometimes ask me what it was like not having a dad. I was always at a loss to know what to say. I didn’t know what it was like to have...

When Allied forces stormed the beaches of Normandy in June 1944, they didn’t expect to meet much in the way of resistance. The biggest naval bombardment in history had been launched against German defences, and just before landing 5,000 rockets were fired against German positions. It should have been enough to neutralise the enemy. But it wasn’t. The majority of shells fired that morning turned ou...

Some years ago I found myself caught up in the aftermath of a bombing and subsequent rioting. Mindful of my safety my hosts wisely insisted that I should remain ‘locked down’ until the danger had passed. It was a strange experience being in isolation while just yards away the streets were in chaos.  When I finally walked out again things were different – there was tension in the air and uncer...

I regularly see this picture with words, ‘There are 5,000 gods worshipped by humanity…. but only yours is right’. The accusation is that any religion that makes an exclusive claim to truth is arrogant. The problem, of course, that the accusation itself is an exclusive claim – no religion is true – and, therefore, fails on its own terms. Imagine a room full of Drs all claiming to have discovered a...

Divisions in society are probably as old as time itself. In the time of Jesus there were three fault lines that divided people from one another: Jew and Gentile, male and female, slave and free. That was just the way that it was. But then Jesus arrived on the scene and drove a coach and horses through the accepted norms of his day. He didn’t care who he hung out with and he caused scandal and offe...

As recent events in the UK have shown it can be one thing to pass a law and quite another to work out how it applies. This is not a new thing. Four thousand years ago God gave a simple framework of laws to govern how we were to live – the Ten Commandments. The fourth of these says that we should not work on the Sabbath. That seems simple enough. But what counts as work? A few years ago on a visit...

A British missionary arrived in Africa keen to share the Good News of Jesus. He hired local porters to carry his gear and set off into the jungle. After a full day’s marching through the heat of the day they stopped for the night, and after a fitful night’s sleep he was eager to set off once more. But the porters refused to move and no amount of cajoling, pleading or the offer of bribes made any d...

Internet speeds in my village are pretty glacial, so a free upgrade to Superfast Fibre Broadband just before lockdown seemed like good news. Sadly, the day arrived and the internet stopped working. After several phone calls a visit from an engineer was arranged, but he decided he needed to climb a telegraph pole and wasn’t qualified to do so. More phone calls and another wait. Problem solved they...

At 11.01pm on 8 th  May 1945 the German surrender was signed, and Victory in Europe declared. People poured onto the streets, and from the balcony of Buckingham Palace the King and Prime Minister joined in the celebrations of a hard-won victory over tyranny. But Europe was a continent in ruins. Some regions were on the brink of famine and the threat of Communism was marching west. Having won...

I keep seeing social media posts implying that Covid-19 demonstrates either God’s unwillingness or inability to deal with the current pandemic. Well the story of the Prodigal Son says otherwise. In the story an ungrateful son rejects his father and takes off with his inheritance. Because his father loves him, he lets him – to force him to stay would only cause more bitterness and resentment. But t...

Air travel in the 1960’s was a bit more exciting than it is now. Exciting if you didn’t mind being hijacked that is. Reluctant to cause hold-ups with check-in security, airlines were happy to let people board without checking their bags. So it was that on 31st October 1969 Raffaele Minichiello stepped aboard Flight TWA85 with a rifle in his rucksack and no intention of getting off when the plane l...

In 2007 Andrew Lloyd Webber was busily writing the score for a new musical. He recorded the music on his piano’s built-in computer. It was the only copy. So, quite a setback when his kitten, Otto, climbed inside the instrument and managed to delete the whole thing. Fortunately, Andrew had a good memory and was able to reconstruct the score. The result – a sequel to Phantom of the Opera &#821...

Heathrow Airport is rather quieter at the moment than it used to be. Probably rather like it was when it started life as the Great West Aerodrome in 1929 fourteen miles from the centre of London. At the time the aerodrome sat amongst farms, market gardens and orchards. It seemed the perfect place for an airport to serve an ever growing city. What no one envisaged at the time was that passenger num...

Growing up in Sussex I spent a lot of time at my aunt’s house. She liked to think she was quite posh and never missed an opportunity to teach us good table manners. For example, she impressed upon us that in polite society potatoes should always be served on the right-hand side of a plate. To this day I have no idea why, but I still do it without thinking. Perhaps more usefully she taugh...

It’s sometimes suggested that belief in Jesus and the resurrection is the same as belief in Father Christmas, or the Tooth Fairy. All are figments of human imagination, childish ideas that we discard as soon as we learn to know better. But there’s an obvious problem: Enormous numbers of children believe in Father Christmas and the Tooth Fairy until they realise that these characters are make-belie...