Dear friends,

Yesterday the Chancellor announced inevitable tax rises and spending cuts to address our post-pandemic and energy crises; the latter impacted by continuing war in Ukraine.

As a church what a privilege to be part of God’s good response to the grim news around. The team are preparing to assemble our Christmas hampers. We’re expanding our community larder. We’ll be able to offer warm space through Kingdom Café. We continue to give 10% to various charities, most latterly A Rocha, the Christian conservation charity Steve Hughes mentioned. These are just a few practical ways we are able to live out the gospel but there are so many other ways too…As we pray, worship and seek to live out the life of a loving community together – we have the opportunity bring the overflow of the  goodness of God  to our community.

Recently that’s what we’ve been thinking about - God’s goodness. It may seem a really basic thing to think about (‘Yeah, yeah I know, heard it all before’) but often it’s the most basic things that get overlooked. God is not vindicate or cruel, he’s not ‘got it in for me’ or waiting to trip me up. He is genuinely good. Do I really believe that?

Recently I have been really impacted thinking about Psalm 23:6, ‘Surely your goodness and unfailing love will  pursue  me  all the days of my life  ’. I love this version (the New Living Translation) which uses the word ‘pursue’ rather than ‘follow’. Other psalms describe my enemies hounding me – pursuing me – but here its God’s goodness and love that is pursuing us closest. He’s got my back. He’s hounding me down. I may be conscious of looking for God myself, (‘Where’s he gone? I keep losing him!’) but actually it is him seeking me. Sometimes our own stubbornness and pride can get in the way. But as we stop and look over our shoulder, rather than seeing an enemy about to pounce as we feared, we find it’s God’s goodness and love doggedly pursuing us all along.

God bless   

Dan