• A Preface for Ash Wednesday

  13/02/2021

  The following preface was written to mark the beginning of Lent and reflects the language and character of the Lenten material in the Scottish Liturgy 1982 and Daily Prayer of the Scottish Episcopal Church

  Dear Friends in Christ, it is the custom of Christian people to prepare to mark the time of Christ’s passion and resurrection by a season of penitence and fasting.

  The church calls each of us during these forty days to repent of all that causes harm to ourselves, harm to our earthly dwelling place and harm to our relationship with God.

  By carefully keeping these days, Christians take to heart the call to repentance and the assurance of forgiveness proclaimed in the gospel, and so grow in faith and devotion. In turning our hearts towards God, we discover anew the boundless grace of God.

  For God will help us to create beauty even within the turmoil of this chaotic world and will help us to gather a harvest of joy and gladness from lives of sorrow and care. Today and every day, God calls the wandering exile home.

  We are invited therefore, in the name of the Church, to the observance of a holy Lent, by self-examination and repentance; by prayer, fasting, and self-denial; and by reading and meditating on God’s holy word.

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  31/03/2015

  Over the last few years I’ve become much more aware of the things in the life of the Christian church which cause trouble for other people. Specifically, I took part in an interesting symposium a couple of years ago on how Christian preaching relates to Judaism. I learned a lot by listening to people there…

• A Question about Marriage and the Bible – can you help

  17/03/2015

  I’ve been asked an interesting question by the Vice Provost, the Rev Cedric Blakey this week. The question is this – or at least something like this: If one were in conversation with a couple considering marriage, which married couples from the bible would you cite as good examples of marriage based on the biblical…

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  14/03/2015

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  13/03/2015

  My introduction to irony came when I was but 7 years old, in the form of the title of the television programme. It was called: Why Don’t You Just Switch Off Your Television Set and Go Out and Do Something Less Boring Instead? It seems to me that this title allows us a way in…