Viewing all items in Resource Category: Editorial

Christmas Presence Loving, Almighty God, Christmas Rush Bells Never Sound Any Sweeter The Word of Light Your Gift of Life – at Christmas ** Christmas Presence (Isa 9:6, 7:14) Unto us a child is born To us a son is given…   And you will call Him Immanuel, God with us.   Jesus, God actually...

  Just 30 years ago, on 25th December 1991, Mikhail Gorbachev resigned as President of the Soviet Union, and the next day the Soviet Union was officially dissolved. The remaining Soviet republics became independent states. Mr Gorbachev had wanted to keep the Soviet Union together, and his policies of glasnost and perestroika had been part...

Daily Hope, a free phone line which offers prayers and support for callers, receives nearly 20,000 calls every month. The service, which was launched during the Covid-19 lockdown, has spent more than 7.15 million minutes on more than 550,000 calls. The phone line originally launched in April 2020, only to continue in response to ongoing...

Everyone knows that it was on the feast of Stephen that ‘good king Wenceslas looked on’.  After all, it’s in a Christmas carol – but why? There’s nothing about Christmas in it: a splendid young page who rustled up some flesh, wine and logs, an old man out in the snow (’deep and crisp and...

If you and your partner have rows about how hot the house should be this Christmas, bear this in mind: women really do need the heat turned up more than men do. Recent research has found that the difference in the sexes also applies to other species, from mammals to birds. As one scientist at...

Be kind to the wildlife in your garden – what little of it remains. The UK is one of the world’s most nature-depleted countries, and it may not even have enough biodiversity – variety of plant and animal life – to prevent an ecological meltdown. That is the finding of new data by the Natural...

Have you ever stopped to consider that the very first martyr of the Christian Church (Stephen died c 35 AD) was a deacon?  (But no, he wasn’t worked to death by his church.)  It was Stephen, one of the first seven deacons of the Christian Church.  He’d been appointed by the apostles to look after...

Some people like surprises. The pleasant ones, anyway! When we look at the Christmas story, it is full of surprises. Mary didn’t expect to be chosen by God to give birth to His Son. Joseph was surprised and shocked that his fiancée was pregnant. The couple thought they would start married life together in Nazareth,...

Try to be kind to each other this Christmas: many of us could do with some gentle encouragement. Depression and anxiety have risen by more than a quarter since the pandemic, according to the first global estimate of Covid’s impact on mental health last year.  The reduced interaction of people, the increase in isolation, coupled...

‘In that region there were shepherds keeping watch over their flock’ In the Old Testament shepherds were greatly valued and treated with respect. Patriarchs, prophets and kings had all tended sheep. Job, a rich man, owned 14,000 sheep. David was tending sheep when he was called by God and anointed by Samuel. But as the...

If you are thinking of doing any wild swimming dips over the Christmas break, bear this in mind: more than half of England’s major rivers are polluted with raw or partially treated sewage. This is partly because water companies have been allowed to release raw sewage into rivers and seas as part of a ‘combined...

Christian churches and organisations across Scotland have recently co-signed a letter calling for people to pray.  The Moderator of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, Lord Wallace, said: “In this pandemic, our responsibility is to come together and offer our prayers for all the many diverse expressions of our Christian faith that enrich...