Tagged: generosity
How much wine do you want?
Many years ago, longer ago than I care to remember, I was just a couple of months into my very first post in the church after leaving college.
And there came a rather frantic knocking on my door on a Saturday night about 10 o’clock. I opened the door to a rather distressed young man. To say he was panicking is really a bit of an understatement. He had been to the vicarage, he said, and the vicarage was empty – it would be, because the vicar was away on holiday. He was getting married in a few weeks at another church, he told me, and he had completely forgotten to get his banns read. The priest who was performing the ceremony had just reminded him. Was there still time? He’d been told that without the banns being called he couldn’t get married. For those who don’t know – in England the banns have to be called in churches where people live, in case anyone knows a legal reason why they shouldn’t get married, on three Sundays before the wedding.
Well, I sat him down and calmed him down, and we worked out that there were still – just – three Sundays left before the wedding. Being new at the job I knew nothing about the legalities of banns of marriage, but I worked it out and we called the banns.
I subsequently discovered that, technically, he hadn’t given the required notice, and that I should have told him to apply to the Bishop for a special licence, but I’m really rather glad I didn’t know that at the time. I think it might have pushed him right over the edge.
Continue readingOh dear! The wine has run out!
Last Sunday we heard of the amazing miracle of the turning of water into wine – the first miracle of Jesus, according to John’s gospel, at a wedding party in Cana of Galilee
All through Advent we in the Church get ready for Christmas with a period of penitence and abstinence. I suspect we all found it very difficult, while most of the country was already in a celebratory mood, to do without such things as alcohol and meat – at least on Wednesdays and Fridays if not every day. You did fast during Advent, didn’t you? (No – it seems they didn’t given their response but that’s all right – I didn’t either!)
Continue readingWhat I said last Sunday – Trinity 20 (Proper 23)
Here’s my offering for last Sunday. The gospel reading is the story of the ten lepers who are healed by Jesus, but only one of them says thank you.
Why do people find it so difficult, these days, to say ‘thank you’?
Take Christmas and birthdays, for example. When I was growing up it was taken for granted that you taught your children that saying ‘thank you’ was essential – even when you had to say it for things that you didn’t actually want. It was the polite thing to do, and it was expected. It was, as my parents used to say, the ‘done thing’. What was not the ‘done thing’ was to tell your parents exactly what you wanted for Christmas or birthday presents. These days everyone makes sure beforehand that you know exactly what presents they want, which to my mind rather takes the fun out of giving. When I was young you simply had to wait to find out what you were getting – which of course just increased the temptation to go looking beforehand while your parents weren’t around to see what they had bought. My father used to hide the Christmas presents in the loft, which was inaccessible without a step-ladder, so there was no way a small child could investigate – rather sneaky on his part, I thought. Continue reading
View from the Valley 