Dear All Yesterday in my ‘Thought for the day’ I referred to Samson as a ‘sunny boy’. Not that I was expecting anyone to pick up on the pun, but for your interest, the name Samson is derived from the Hebrew ‘Shimshon’ which means ‘sun’, hence ‘sunny boy’. If any of you did notice please do let me know. For today, however, I would like to leave ‘sunny boy’ alone and refer to a TV programme I happened to come across recently. It was a studio programme featuring many representatives of the......

Read More

Dear All Just for your interest, I’m getting about six weeks to the gallon of fuel in my car and there are 17.6 million grains of sugar in a 1KG bag, The grass actually grows each day at the rate of… During this lockdown, we have all had to make considerable adaptations and changes in our daily lives and routines and we’ve made some interesting discoveries too. We have even realised that we possess many talents hitherto hidden and have tried to put them to good use. By the lack of self-rising......

Read More

Dear Reader Someone a short while ago got a bit annoyed with me and told me that ”I talked too much”. I said: ‘Well, we all have our opinions and If you really think I talk too much just let me know and we can talk about it”. I don’t think it was you! We are all familiar with phrases, are we not, like, ‘shoot from the hip’, ‘I always speak my mind’, ‘in my opinion’, ‘let me finish’ and so on…… You can hear these phrases every day, maybe you even......

Read More

Dear Reader Walls are ‘man-made’ constructions and serve many purposes. We are familiar with the many walled gardens in existence throughout the country, an attractive and functional feature of many stately homes and estates. These gardens, many which we have no doubt visited through the National Trust for Scotland or its equivalent in England, The National Trust. They are nice places to visit to get a glimpse of how some privileged folk lived in the past, some still do of course. Hopefully, we will be able to visit them again soon. Apart......

Read More

Dear Reader Many of our hymns and songs have their origins in the bible. Some are paraphrases and some are personal devotional compositions. In some denominations, the Free Church of Scotland for example, you will usually only ever hear the Psalms being sung, principally because they are words of scripture and not subjective emotional interpretations of scripture. I can understand why this is the case and say at this point, that some of our hymns, songs and tunes that we use today are truly woeful, but we all, of course, have our......

Read More

Dear Reader If we haven’t needed to exercise our limited patience in the past, we’ve certainly had to these past thirty-plus days as we continue with our restrictions. I get the feeling that patience for some is just about spent and what comes next is anyone’s guess. There are good days and bad days for sure and some of us are definitely more patient than others. Although I’ve started to write about ‘patience’ I don’t want to continue with that theme, but rather think briefly about the various God-given gifts we have......

Read More

Dear Reader Now into our second month of restrictions, I thank you all for your continuing and encouraging messages of support. I thank you too for the many ‘funnies’ doing the rounds for our amusement. It’s good to laugh. Dependent on personal circumstances, we have been truly fortunate with the lovely weather. I suspect being stuck up a high rise can’t be easy though, good weather or bad and the good weather might understandably make little difference. It might even cause more frustration and I have sympathy for those in that situation.......

Read More

Dear Reader, Today the medical scientists will begin their vaccine trials as a first step in what is a very complex procedure. With global cooperation, however, things are able to move much quicker than would normally be the case. Isn’t it heartening and hopeful to see what is being achieved with everyone working together? The only other time we see this kind of cooperation, action and alliance is during a war sadly. ‘Ploughshares beaten into swords’, (no, I haven’t got it the wrong way round). All the machinery and human endeavour at......

Read More

Dear Reader When did you last have a good dream, or perhaps a nightmare? Dreams are strange are they not? We find ourselves in strange situations and having the most outrageous conversation with all sorts of people in all sorts of places. We can be back at school, we can be stuck in a lift, the scenarios are endless. Recurring dreams are apparently signs of tension and anxiety. I once had a minister friend who had this recurring and frequent dream on a Saturday night or in the early hours of Sunday......

Read More

Dear Reader All our conversations today are usually and necessarily conducted by using texts, phones, Facebook and indeed any other social medium that does not involve us meeting in person. I think some folk are still using carrier pigeons as well. We all want to talk and meet one another but we can’t for the time being at least, so my conversations with you will continue each day by email. Even on social media what we say and how we say it is very important and can have long and lasting consequences.......

Read More