Christ Church Huntingdon Blog

 Click here for recording... Welcome to Thought for the Day. Well tomorrow will be the last day of 2024. I wonder how it went for you? Maybe you had a memorable family gathering to look back on, or a great holiday, or moved home like we did. Maybe you had a change in your job or your relationships, or a new family member arrived. Certainly, internationally, it’s been quite a year… Our July elections in the UK that saw a massive Labour landslide, and a new MP for Huntingdon. And as well as the re-election of Donald Trump (who himself narrowly escaped an assassination in July), there have been elections in Iran, Mexico, Bangladesh to name a few. There has been the resignation of the Archbishop of   Canterbury. There have been hurricanes and storms, There have been earthquakes in Japan, Taiwan and Vanuatu. There’s been the ongoing military conflicts in Ukraine, Israel and Palestine, Myanmar. And of course the toppling of the Assad regime in Syria, martial law in South Korea. ...

 Click here for audio... Welcome to Thought for the Day. I wonder what makes you feel like Christmas is really nearly here? Is it wrapping up the Christmas parcels? Is it watching your favourite Christmas movie? Or is it treating yourself to a tiramisu latte from Caffe Nero’s   new festive range? For me I feel like Christmas has all but arrived when I hear the carol singing. I just love carol singing. Some folk from a few churches were out and about last night in the streets of Hartford, and last Sunday we as a church had our Christmas carol service at Christ Church Huntingdon. Perhaps the reason I love carols is because one of the traditions at my Grandad’s house where we used to spend Christmas as children was listening in to the festival of 9 lessons and carols from Kings College Cambridge. Maybe that’s one of your traditions too. Christmas isn’t about the commercialism and shopping. It’s not even first of all about the presents or time with loved ones, though that...

  Click here for audio  Click here for touch tone noises! Welcome to Thought for the Day. Now it was on this day in history 61 years ago that the touch tone phone was rolled out in the USA. If you have no idea about what I’m talking about let me explain. You know that thing you have in your pocket for checking facebook, texting your mum and buying your groceries. It’s called a mobile phone right? Well you probably remember those things called landlines, and some of you may still have one. Going right back in history (and I can remember these, and many of the listeners will be able to as well) phones used to have a big dial on them that you would rotate round to get the right number. The mechanism inside would send the right number of pulses down the line to connect you to the right person. But on this day in November 1963 the touch tone phone was produced. Instead of a pulse, at the push of a button you got sounds like this . You might just remember them from your dia...

  Click here for audio.  Welcome to Thought for the Day. Thanks so much for listening. Well our hearts go out to the residents in Brampton who have been affected by flooding in the last few weeks. According to the BBC news website, one woman who has been living in Brampton for 20 years says she has never seen it so badly affected. Her garden was a third underwater and there’s raw sewage pouring down the driveway. There can’t be many things more upsetting than seeing your home when it doesn’t feel like a home. There’s something about your home which is supposed to be a haven, an oasis, a place of refuge and comfort not of deluge or disaster. As the saying goes, “an Englishman’s home is his castle”. So to have it invaded by anything- thieves, moths or flood is just not what it’s supposed to be. The Bible talks about a heavenly home after death for those who follow Jesus. We call it heaven, or the new heaven and earth. It’s not for good people, because there are none ...

 Audio here .  Welcome to Thought for the Day. Thanks so much for listening. “A little kindness goes a long way” doesn’t it? The other day I was in the bank trying to get some help with my online banking app, and the lady was… well really kind. She didn’t patronise me, she didn’t hurry me along, she showed me how I could make the sort of bank transfer I was trying to do, even saving money in the process. And rather than me feeling a fool for not on top of my mobile banking app, she went out of her way to help me- super kind!   Now this isn’t a product placement, and other banks are available, but if the team from NatWest in the High Street in Huntingdon are listening in, a big thank you for the kindness that I have consistently received in your branch. You don’t always associate kindness with business, but there’s nothing to stop us being kind at work, or at home, with our friends, with our family. A little kindness goes a long way and small actions can really make ...

 For audio click here .  Welcome to Thought for the Day. We had a recent wedding of a couple that met at church and so wedding bells have been on my mind. So I was pretty astonished when I read the story of Acaimie and Clay Chastain [1] . They were on honeymoon in the Caribbean climbing a volcano. Husband Clay descended deeper into the crater while his new wife Acaimie waited. Suddenly she heard the sound of something snapping and cried out to him, but he didn’t respond. Facing her fears, she climbed down deep into the dormant volcano to see him lying on his side covered in blood. The couple think a rope had snapped and he had had a terrible fall which involved him cracking his skull and jaw and spinal fluid was leaking into his sinuses. Neither of their mobiles had any signal. Acaimie helped Clay to walk propping him up and trying to stop him from stumbling. Eventually they got to help and he was transferred to hospital in the US where he has made a good recovery. He still ha...

 For audio, click here .  Picture Wikipedia CC-by-SA 4.0 here .   Welcome to Thought for the Day. I had the privilege with my family last week to go to the Huntingdon Gymnastics Gym last Thursday evening to see Jake Jarman the Olympic gymnast come back to his club with his Bronze medal to be interviewed by BBC news. There were cameras, satellite dishes, and a massive crowd of supporters all waving their Union Jacks. Thank you Huntingdon Gymnastics Club. I wonder whether you saw any of Jake’s gymnastic routines in the Olympics? Now I’m no athlete, my kids can do the splits and cartwheels and various gymnastics moves (they too are members of the club) but I would if I even sat cross legged and can’t even pull off a pull up, and the only double pike I’ve got close to was the fish I saw in a river once. So it’s been impressive to see Jake’s moves on the screen- floor routines, pommel horse, high bars and the rings. We are so proud to have a Huntingdon hero representi...

 Click here for audio.  I love it when local news becomes national news. A problem with wheelie bins in a sleepy Cornish fishing village shouldn’t really be breaking news on our web feeds and newspaper columns, but that’s what happened a couple of days ago. The wonderfully named village of Mousehole hit the national news [1] when the local Cornwall Council changed the wheelie bins for new ones. But the trouble is that they didn’t take the old ones away. Apparently there have been 10,000 requests to the council to get them taken away, but it still hasn’t happened. So what was described by poet Dylan Thomas as one of England’s prettiest villages, “Mousehole” has become dubbed “Binhole” due to the rather unattractive wheelie bins that are accumulating in the streets and getting covered in seagull poo. Photos show them in clusters down the street, or stacked on top of each other waiting for the council to come and take them away. Somehow in the summer months between the Tru...

  Click here for audio.  "There is only one thing I can say - I'm sorry”. These are the words of Conservative MP Suella Braverman after the general election results last week. “I'm sorry that my party didn't listen to you. The Conservative Party has let you down. You voted for us over 14 years and we did not keep our promises. We have acted and we need to learn our lesson because, if we don't, we will have many worse nights to come. The country deserves better and I will do everything in my power to rebuild but we need to listen to you - you have spoken very clearly." Well I’m not into politics, and possibly you aren’t either. And maybe sometimes apologies can feel a little hollow. But in politics, in personal life, in public and in private, it’s good when we get things wrong to say sorry. Beyoncé, Madonna, Madness, UB40, Guns and Roses, Justin Bieber, they’ve all got songs called “Sorry”. As Elton John sang “Sorry seems to be the hardest word”. You f...

  Click here for audio recording.  Well singer songwriter, Bruce Springsteen may have been “born in the USA”, but he has recently been over this side of the pond. “The Boss” as he’s affectionately known in the world of rock, played to some big crowds in Cardiff, Ireland and Sunderland, and while he was here he actually picked up the prestigious Ivor Novello fellowship award for his contribution towards the music industry, having sold more than 140 million records, and having won an Oscar, a Tony and 20 Grammy Awards. He received the award from fellow legend Paul McCartney who gently mocked him , saying that he couldn’t think of a more fitting recipient… “except  Bob Dylan, or Paul Simon or Billy Joel or Beyonce, the list goes on”. I remember in the 80s being shipped out to France as a 12-year old on a school trip to improve my French, and stayed with a young couple who played “Born in the USA” on repeat. It left quite an impression on me! Well I was quite struck by someth...

Click here for audio.   A member of our church ran the Milton Keynes marathon last week. She said that as she was running along, she overtook someone who was running the whole marathon backwards! Wow, that is seriously impressive. I mean it’s hard enough to run a marathon forwards. I do a little jogging from time to time, and I’ve done the parkrun and a 10k race, but 36 miles, that’s a long long way. But to do it running backwards…. I don’t think we were designed to run backwards, it’s probably a whole different set of muscles, and then of course, you can’t see where you are going. Apparently running backwards is a thing- it’s known as retro running [1] , and for some people it’s the only way they can run a marathon [2] . Well, when I heard about this, I thought, maybe there’s a bit of an analogy. How many of us are doing life running backwards? Rather than facing forwards into the future, we are going through life facing backwards. Perhaps it’s due to a sadness in the...