10 April 2025 St. Paul says , ‘I press on towards the goal for the prize .. ’ He is on the way. He hasn’t arrived. Neither have we. This is our encouragement. We live in that sphere of the pressing on, the looking forward, the straining towards the goal, the prize which he describes as the heavenly or upward call of God in Christ Jesus. The purpose of Paul’s straining and his running and his reaching out is to know Christ. Nothing else is of any significance and nothing else holds the promise of eternal life! I love the sense of movement inherent in the alternative reading ‘the upward call’. It encourages us to lift up our eyes, our ears, our head and our body to see and to hear the one who calls us upward! This is the focus of our ministry, our life together. This is the source of our unity, our peace which passes all understanding. This is our healthy perspective, the place where our vision is shaped and sharpened and inspired. This is the abiding place of Him...
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9 April 2025 In Isaiah’s prophecy (43;16-21) , the Lord suggests that the wild animals will honour him. This may be part of Isaiah’s glorious vision of the ‘peaceable kingdom’ where the lion will lie down with the lamb and a little child shall lead them or it may be something else like a warning to those who do not trust in the new thing which God is doing. For two creatures are mentioned in the text. The first is the ostrich. In the Bible, she is considered foolish laying her eggs on the ground and treating her young as if they weren’t hers. ‘For God did not endow her with wisdom.’ says Job. And for us, she sticks her head in the sand hoping that any change will never happen! There are parishes where the elders and members are growing older and the worshipping community is diminishing in size and people are only interested in keeping things going as they hope that things will stay just the same and see them out! The second creature is the jackal. It belongs to the wild d...
8 April 2025 For almost two thousand years, the world believed with Aristotle that the moon was a smooth, unblemished sphere. When Galileo got access to a telescope which magnified things by a factor of thirty, he discovered that it was ‘uneven, rough, full of cavities and prominences’. If Aristotle had got it wrong, could his view that the sun orbited the earth also be challenged. Galileo thought so. The Church disagreed. The Inquisition’s fear of change condemned Galileo and confined him to house arrest. But the truth will out. The apology took almost four centuries to come! In the world of science, change took a very long time. In the Church too, it can be long in coming. Vision isn’t enough. We need to have faith, humility to change perspective and the resolve to do something about it! But the truth will out. Change cannot be stopped. As the Lord says: I am about to do a new thing; now it springs forth, do you not perceive it?
7 April 2025 In our North Fife Cluster, we have established a series of four rotational joint services. The first was held in Balmerino in March. When I visited the Kirk Session at Newport recently, the elders told me about the strength of the singing in the kirk and how well everyone mixed at the hospitality in the church hall thereafter. In these services, two things happen. Firstly, we let go of our own building and all the things which comfort and inspire us and travel on to another kirk, another parish, another way of doing things. Secondly, we realise that in travelling next door and beyond, we gain strength and inspiration in numbers and new friendships. One of the most hopeful things which has happened recently in our Cluster has been the ‘Declaration of Friendship’ which has been established between Leuchars St. Athernase and Tayport Church of Scotland and the Kings Street United Free Church, Tayport. Although they had a covenant dating back to 2006...
6 April 2025 ‘The present situation is not a disaster for the church but a God-given opportunity to discard the non-essentials and concentrate on the vital things by which alone any church really lives: the power of the risen Christ bringing life out of death and, in material terms, the water, the bread, the wine and the book, which cost us little and give us everything we need.’ When do you think these words were written? Over fifty years ago! I read them in a booklet entitled, ‘People with a Purpose’ which remains on my bookshelf. It was the summary report for the Committee of Forty set up by the General Assembly in 1972 to clarify our calling, our available resources and the reshaping of the church. ‘ Many of our congregations seem more concerned just to keep going, (ie to pay the bills) or to care for their own members, rather than to reach out to others near and far in Christ’s name.’ That could have been written yesterday for it is a great temptat...
5 April 2025 On 29 July 1969, Neil Armstrong stepped out of his space module and set foot on the moon’s surface. As he did, he said, ‘That’s one small step for man, one giant step for mankind.’ Over 600 million people were watching him. I was one of them. I was fourteen at the time and I was absolutely spellbound. I couldn’t believe that a man could walk on the moon. Exactly ten years later, I visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington DC. There I saw the Command Module for myself. I also saw some moon rock – and couldn’t believe my eyes. When I was there, I bought this photograph of the earth as seen from the moon’s surface. It was taken by Bill Anders on Apollo 8 on Christmas Eve 1968. It is now called ‘Earthrise’. It has remained on my study wall for the past forty-six years. It offered two perspectives. Firstly, the earth is not the centre of our Universe but one planet in one solar system in a vast and ...
4 April 2025 We have seen mothers in wartorn Gaza grieving over the deaths of their children or sitting in the hospital beside an injured child. We have seen mothers in refugee camps making an hospitable home out of basic materials. We have seen mothers carrying children for miles in search of food and water. And mothers devastated by the earthquake in South-East Asia. But we have also seen mothers in our own land who for one reason or another have been devastated by the lack of care which they and their newborn children have experienced in our hospitals. Childbirth which is one of the most natural things that happen in the world has become fraught with danger. Last autumn, it was reported that 131 families had suffered the loss of a baby and catastrophic injuries to infants and mothers in maternity units across Scotland in recent years. This was two years after the Royal College of Midwives warned the Scottish Government about the crisis in staffing and resources in maternity un...