I don’t know about you, but I always find there’s something wonderfully levelling about the weekly ritual of putting out the wheelie bins. Whatever kind of house we live in, whatever car is parked outside, every week the wheelie bins stand side by side on the pavement. And when you’ve been away, perhaps on holiday, how heartening it is to return and find that a neighbour has quietly wheeled yours out and back again. No fuss, no announcement… just a simple act of thoughtfulnes

We heard in our first reading that Amalek came and waged war against Israel, and we are used to the waging of war, both in the Bible and the news, are we not? What we are not told is that Israel had just invaded them, so the waging of war is perhaps a slight exaggeration. The biblical scholars tell us that Amalek was a nomadic tribe that lived on the borderlands between the desert and the Promised Land, rather like Cumbria between Scotland and Lancashire. It’s not hard to ima

If you’re a driver – you know when you stop and let another car out of a junction, or allow someone coming in the opposite direction to...

When I was asked to write Thought for the day for 5th October, I realised that the reading from Luke was particularly relevant to me...