Posts by Charlie Hart

Last week we thanked God for the birth of a new grandchild, a beautiful, precious, tiny, bundle of life. Her birth brought joy, uncontrolled smiles and hope for all that she is and shall grow to be. We look forward to the day when we will be able to hold her and not just gaze at her from a safe distance. This week we mourn the loss of a friend, and Job’s wise words resonate in our hearts, ‘The Lord…

Today we might describe him as a team player, someone who always was with others, together working towards a shared goal. The truth is, he had to be because his life and his livelihood depended on it. Cephas was a professional hunter. Hunting was in his genes, in his heart and in his head. He had an ability to weigh up risks and potential gains, a talent of putting these together into a big picture and in it to pin-point…

2020 is a year which everyone who lived through it will remember. It will be remembered as the year when, coming from China, the crown-wearing Corona virus swept normality and certainty aside. Lives, and loved-ones, and livings were lost as governments locked us down, taking away our freedom to meet, and to travel and to touch. To save lives we were required to ‘stay at home’ and to ‘stay safe’ as our churches, schools, shops and places of work were…

I began writing this blog in the depths of ‘lockdown’. We had seen the world and everything we considered ‘normal’ change, seemingly in a matter of days. I realised that God was at work, as he always is involved in the changes we experience, and I started wondering what was going on and how would our world be changed by this movement of God. So, I turned to my Bible, and the people and passages that fill its pages, and…

How good it is to celebrate, to remember, to thank those who made VE Day possible and to mark the passing of 75 years, almost a lifetime, since it happened. To watch, and to sense the joy and relief and expectation that ‘now things would be better’, draws us closer to the lives of the revellers whose faces we see in the old films. The voices of Churchill, and of those who lived through it, still inspire us, reminding us…

This last week has been a struggle. It has been little different from the weeks before it, but this week I have felt confined, disappointed that I could not see friends and family face-to-face and have missed my freedom to go to different places. I have not even been out of the house this week. Before this time of lockdown I did not appreciate how freeing it is to write and to read the thoughts of others. Our words can…

Just a few days ago I happened to read again the words I wrote in the last days of 2019 as we considered where God would lead our church and community this year. My prayer then, was that we would be a community that was ‘on-fire’. Everyone filled with the fire of God’s Spirit living in us, and empowered to do great things for him. 2019 had been a year when we had felt that we had been ‘under-fire’, dealing…

James’ eldest brother was out of control. They had all got along great until recently, but then his brother had started hanging out with the wrong sort of folk. He had started saying things that upset a lot of people, especially the authorities, and the things he had started doing had begun to attract a lot of media attention. The numbers of people following him were getting bigger every day. James was not sure what was happening but his brother…