Tag Archives: joy

Peace Dancing

I wonder how you like to eat your meals. Are you the kind of person who likes to eat each thing on it’s own, in turn, or do you load a bit of everything on your fork for each mouthful? Do you eat your favourite thing first or leave it to last? Put a roast […]

Restoring Preaching

Every day, at exactly the same time, Margaret would go to the bathroom cabinet, open it, and take out a huge bottle of castor oil. Then she would head to the kitchen to get a tablespoon. At the sound of the drawer opening and the silverware rattling, Patches, her Yorkshire terrier, would run and hide […]

Rejoicing in Generosity

This evening it really is the end of Paul’s letter to the Christians in Philippi. He is ready to sign off, but before he does so, he has a final subject he wants to reinforce in the Philippians minds. He is going to talk about generosity. In some ways I really love talking about generosity, […]

Rejoicing in Reconciliation

Do you ever have those conversations with someone who always has “just another thing”? You’ve had a pleasant chat and thought you were about to part company and then they come up with “just another thing”? We are coming towards the end of our sermon series on Philippians and Paul is beginning to wind up […]

Rejoice in prayer

This evening we are beginning our new sermon series exploring Paul’s letter to the church in Philippi but before we dive into the letter itself, it is worth taking a few minutes to understand the background and the context it is written into. A lot of this background is provided by the reading we had […]

Earthy humility, shameful suffering, effervescent joy.

This morning we are looking forward to Lent, and especially the way in which many of the folk of St Andrew’s different congregations are going to be exploring Lent with the help of this book,“Learning to dream again”. In the introduction the author suggests three themes that can help us to develop a Christian wisdom: […]

Don’t Worry. Rejoice.

When I was last in a prison I was sorry to leave, but was also very glad that I didn’t have to stay. I’d been there as part of my work experience placement from college when I was training to be a vicar. I’d spent two weeks with the chaplains, getting a bit of a […]

Why Me?

I was watching a TV programme a couple of days ago, the main character in which has lung cancer. He’d come to the end of a course of treatment, had some tests, and it turned out the cancer was in remission. The tumour had shrunk by 80%. His wife organised a party for all their […]

Joy hard won

Before we look at today’s passage, let’s remind ourselves a bit about the church that Paul is writing to. It was a church that he planted in the city of Philippi. Two of the key events from the church’s early life are its roots in a prayer group that used to meet at the river, […]

Looking at your elbow

I wonder if you might try something for me. Would you look at your elbow? Not the bit on the inside, but the pointy bit on the outside. It’s really quite a difficult thing to do, isn’t it? If I’d asked you to look at spot just between your shoulder blades, then you’d have known […]