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Last year (2023) 30 million people in the UK made New Year resolutions, with health (28%), money (27%), family (24%) and self-improvement (21%) topping the charts for the most common resolutions. However, surveys suggest that most people lasted seven weeks before giving them up and 21% only lasted for a month before giving up. What...

Courage, vision and leadership are found in the most unlikely of places. Mary Slessor was born in December 1848 into a wretchedly poor family. Her father was an alcoholic who lost his job as a shoemaker. Mary was the second of seven children, and in 1859 they moved from Aberdeen into the fetid slums of...

Last year (2023) 30 million people in the UK made New Year resolutions, with health (28%), money (27%), family (24%) and self-improvement (21%) topping the charts for the most common resolutions. However, surveys suggest that most people lasted seven weeks before giving them up and 21% only lasted for a month before giving up. What...

If you have nothing much going for you, Antony Pucci (1819-92) should be your patron saint. He came from nowhere – a peasant family in Tuscany. He went nowhere – he spent his life as a parish priest in the Tuscan city of Viareggio. He was unattractive to look at.  He wasn’t good with words...

Heroes are not always men or women of action. Sometimes the fight for right over wrong can be even more powerful when done through words and argument. Hilary was such a champion of the Christian faith. Born into a wealthy pagan family in Poitiers in 315, he first became an orator of Neo-Platonism. Here he...

This is the first of a new series aimed at providing an overview of the Bible. This month we consider the first book, Genesis. As the title suggests, Genesis is primarily about beginnings. In chapters 1-11, it records the creation of the heavens and the earth and human beings; marriage and family; sin’s effect on...

What do you do when you find a large spider web in your house? If you ever feel some sympathy for the spider who went to all that trouble, then Felix is a good patron saint for you. He was saved by such a spider, spinning such a web. Felix had been born to a...

If your Christmas and New Year break included just too many people and even a bout of indigestion, then St Anthony may be the saint for you. He was a hermit-monk with a reputation for making poorly people feel better. Anthony was born in Coma (Upper Egypt) in 251, and at 20 became an ascetic....

Not many teenagers, on becoming a Christian, will devote themselves to winning others for Christ in a foreign land. Amy was such a person. She left Britain to live in a tiny village in Southern India. Here, for the next 56 years, Amy rescued hundreds of orphaned and vulnerable children, and served her Lord in...

Here you can download ALL of the Editorial for January 2024 in one single document.

I thought we’d spend a few months at the start of this New Year considering the outside of a church building, and the gardens around it. For many churches this will include a churchyard, though not necessarily. If your church does stand in a churchyard, then it may be what is known as a ‘closed’...

The Christian charity ‘Embrace the Middle East’ (Embrace) has launched a crisis appeal to raise support for its Christian partners in Gaza and Israel, as they seek to help those affected by the war. Embrace reports that the recent pause in fighting has given its partners on the ground time to take some action:  Al...