People often imagine that God is ‘up there’, above us, and beyond our reach. He is untouched by our actions and unmoved by our concerns. This God looks down on the earth and decides how things should be. He speaks through commands, writes rules and gives his favour to the people he thinks merit it…

Pain and suffering are words used to describe the very worst aspects of our human experience. They are the things that hurt us and cause us grief. When we are in pain or see people close to us suffering, our experience of life alters as does our mood and feelings from positive to negative, from…

Often, it is just one note that signals the start of the season. We recognise, in an instant, the opening chord of the 80’s Christmas hit or the first bar from the soundtrack of our favourite festive film and our Christmas present connects with Christmases past. I love the music and the looking back. I…

We all have a Christmas soundtrack. Maybe it’s Carols learned while at school, or singing along to Slade, Wham or the Darkness. The gospel writers, Matthew and Luke, also had a soundtrack in mind when they wrote their accounts of Jesus’ birth, and just as our Christmas season comes to life when we start to…

The children of Israel lived for 40 years in the wilderness. That is a long time! We call the journey this ancient people took from slavery in Egypt through this wilderness to the land that God promised The Exodus. A journey that should have taken only weeks, ended up taking years. Why did it take…

Tonight our home will be filled again with the hum of conversation and the clink of coffee cups. Something new is starting. God is moving and I am not sure what will happen next. God has always been at work in these northern Yorkshire Dales. After all, he is the one who created this land…