She made a mask

Laura spent a good few hours making this mask over the half term break ... It's for her art project in school ...I think it's brilliant ..but I suppose I am biased :-)

A couple of days in the lakes ..

Had a week off last week with the highlight being one night at this bed and breakfast in Hawkshead . The lake district is a wonderful place especially at this time of year . However it does like to rain there :-)

Also visited Rob ( my nephew) who lives as a student in Blackpool . He hates the place and can't wait to finish his course this year so that he can escape . I must admit I do share his dislike for the place ..Blackpool does nothing for me ... anyway here are some pics..

Singing in the Bowness Rain !!

The Seagulls of windermere ..

Laura studies Wordworth's Grave

The Hills are alive with colour in Grasmere

Billy Bob & the Crew

It brought back memories ....

Last night Gill and I were treated to a trip to the Birmingham Hippodrome to see Willie Russells Blood Brothers .

A play set in 1970's Liverpool about twin brothers growing up, separated in different families and different cultural classes .

It brought back many childhood memories of dirty knees and games of "Cowboys and Indians" . I thoroughly enjoyed the evening, particularly the memories that it evoked . If you get a chance go and see it .

Coffee morning on tour

Yesterday some of the Coffee morning punters went on tour to see Doris ( the Lady in the blue top)

Doris left Wem in July to go and live nearer to her Son in Brampton near Cambridge . It was a great day out ...the food and cakes were especially good :-)

Visit from old friends ... or is that Ancient friends :-)

Chris & Brenda

Yesterday it was our great honour as a family to dine with the Cliff's . Chris & Brenda are good friends from our days at Wheelock Heath . They joined us for morning worship at Wem , which again was greatly blessd with numbers ...extra seats having to be put out for the fourth week running ...

Busy week ahead ....essays to write on top of the usual stuff ..

Not quite sure what they were getting up to here !!! Captions anyone :-)

A successful days conker hunting

We did well. Here is the evidence ............

Conker Hunting

Going on a conker hunt with Laura today ...I love conkers , there is something about the horse chestnut that compels you to go looking for them

Fascinating fact .....Ever wondered why they call it 'Horse Chestnut ' ? Apparently its because the empty shell often looks like a horseshoe ....So now you can sleep well at night having solved the mystery that I am sure has troubled you for years :-)

Danny returns

Dan the man is back
Danny ..Pastor of this church ...has made a welcome return to the blogosphere ...but will it last??Those who know him can leave a comment ...Do you think he will go the distance ???

Great night tonight at Senior YPF .... between Junior and Senior we had just under 80 young people ...Praying that all of them would have a faith that yields much fruit

Be Careful ..............

Joshua , the God fearing man who took over from Moses and led the children of God over the Jordan and into the promised land said this on his deathbed....

Joshua 23:11 ( ESV)

"Be very careful , therefore to love the Lord your God"

He tells us in that chapter to keep God's covenant , He tells us to cling to the Lord , he tells us not to step out of line by breaking God's Law ...

We all need to be very careful ....The dictionary definition of careful is

"Attentive to potential danger, error, or harm; cautious: was careful when crossing the busy street; gave a careful answer."

How attentive are we to the potential dangers that will harm our faith in Jesus Christ ???

Read and meditate on the last two chapters of Joshua click here God has spoken to me through them today and I trust he will do the same for you

Did you walk to work today ?

And I thought I had a problem with lazyness....

Shan't be having beef on Sunday then....

These cows need a spell -checker :-)

Hungry?

This morning I have been asked to do a school assembly called "Mind the Gap" .It's all about world starvation and how young people can make a difference by trying to bridge the gap between ourselves and third world countries .

Today 16,000 children around the world will die from starvation , thats one child every five seconds ....

Do we care ?. We should . Jesus said that we should " Love our neighbour as ourselves " . God instructs us to help the poor . As Christians we are challenged to be "Lights" in a dark world that is very self centred . With little sense of community

The problem is so big that often we shrug our shoulders and say there is nothing I can do . but there is , the smallest contribution can save one life .

Little things make a huge difference . There are lots of good organisations that are set up to help you help ..... click here for instance ..... why not buy a goat for a village for Christmas ...

Do it...... And save a life

Wheelock Re-visited

We all went back over to our old church at Wheelock heath last night . It was great to have fellowship with some old friends . Ben Griffin preached . Ben is a top bloke with a real heart for the gospel .

It's been two years since we left the church and to my shame this was the first time we have been back on a Sunday . Hopefully, if time and preaching engagements allow, we will not leave it another two years. Thanks to all who made us feel so welcome last night .

When You go to worship

When you worship God ( if you do worship him ) . How do you prepare ? Do you pray ? I read a prayer of Charles Haddon Spurgeon today ...That man knew all about worship .... Read an extract from this book with me

" Glorious God , it is the flower of our being to worship you;this is the crown and glory of life , to adore and worship the Life-giver from whom all good things come. Worship has often been to us as a bath in heavenly pleasure, and we have come out of it refreshed and comforted , blessed and filled with heavenly delight . Oh for the Holy Spirit's power to help us in worship now!. Breathe upon us , O Divine Spirit, and let that breath cause us to forget the world , but bring us into the fullest life in the contemplation of God and heaven ."

Now that is a prayer and a half from a man who had experienced the delights of true worship

Elder on the Run

One our church elders has escaped to China with his wife for a month ( a long way to go for chicken fried rice )

Steve is keeping us all up to date with his escapades via e-mail . This photo is one he took of the "Great Wall" on Monday ...














I am amazed by this wall ...thousands of miles long ...built to keep people out . It started me thinking about the walls we build to keep God out and the names we call them .

The great wall of health wealth and prosperity .... don't need God if you build this one ( or at least you don't think you need God )

The suffering wall .... the one that says there is no God because we suffer ( those who build this wall don't recognise that God knows all about suffering ...look at the cross of Jesus)

The religious wall .... the one that says I'm a good person I obey the rules ( most of the time ) I go to church now and then ...thats enough ( no it's not listen to what the Apostle Paul wrote in Ephesians "For it is by grace you have been saved, through faith—and this not from yourselves, it is the gift of God— not by works, so that no one can boast."
Faith first ...belief and trust first .....doing good works must always flow from that ..

Anyway I'm off to Go and knock down any walls that I have built that keep me from a life of faith and trust ...

If you can suggest any other walls that we build then give us all the benefit of your wisdom in the comments ..........

The Legacy of John Bunyan

I have been reading again some of the works of John Bunyan over the last couple of days ( for those that don't know he is most famous for having written " The Pilgrims progress".)

I love his writings , they may well be full of thee's and thou's ,written in the langauge of the 17th century but they are very compelling and applicable to our day and age .

If you get a chance pick up a copy of anything by Bunyan . He may be long dead but his written legacy lives on . A man who "Walked the talk" .