BBC - Nottingham - Faith - God made my leg grow
God made my leg grow
BBC Radio Nottingham presenter Frances Finn has witnessed a miracle. Watch the footage captured on a mobile phone.
This story was mentioned in the sermon at church this evening. You have to watch the footage to see what happens. The event seems to take place without any hype, drama or displays of emotionalism. Just polite applause once the leg has grown.
What do you think?
The chief executive at the prayer breakfast
I had breakfast with Bill McCarthy, the Chief Exec of the City of York Council. I joined about 40 leaders from churches in the city for one of their occasional prayer breakfasts in The Spurriergate Centre organised by One Voice York. Key leaders from the city are invited to talk frankly about their expectations of the churches and we spend time praying in response.
This morning Bill McCarthy appealed to us to welcome the strangers and the disadvantaged into the city. While only four percent of York’s population is from outside the UK, it’s the fastest growing sector. He said it was important to integrate these new people into York and he asked for our help. There were leaders representing a broad range of churches from Independent Pentecostal to Roman Catholics, Mr McCarthy’s own persuasion. There’s a longer report about the event on the One Voice site.
The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspian | Geekdad from Wired.com
Prince Caspian, like the first Chronicles of Narnia, is visually stunning — from the locations where the movie was filmed, to the sets, to the costuming. The actors and actresses, musical scores, and Aslans voice all contribute to the continuity. The four Pevensie children have been back in London a year in the storyline, and while the younger two children have matured, you get the sense you’ve just left them at the end of the last movie.
The next film in the Chronicles of Narnia series is on it’s way to the UK. It arrives here next month. This guy liked it!
The Disney Site is a bit of fun too - I love the London Underground screen
“What, I wonder, do Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and all the other professional atheists who make good money out of knocking people’s religious faith make of the behaviour of Margaret Mizen in the immediate aftermath of her son Jimmy’s murder?”
Justin Thacker, Head of Theology at EA, writing in The Friday Night Theology
The brutal unprovoked killing of Jimmy Mizen left me wondering if anyone was safe in this advanced corner of civilisation called Britain. Then I heard his mother speaking coherently about the love of God and of the people in her church and how she had been supported by their care. I remember hearing similar voices from close family of victims of violence here in my own country. Safety from violent and evil men isn’t guaranteed either here or anywhere else in the world. But universal access to the love of God and the power to forgive is. It’s up to me to accept it.
The Friday Night Theology is a weekly piece from the Evangelical Alliance designed to provoke discussion over the weekend. It’s usually based on a significant event in the news - so it’s topical.
Simon Jenkins: When it comes to kissing and telling, you cant beat this 15th-century gadget
I am baffled as to why this medium is still so derided by futurology gurus. My bulging file marked “death of the book” stretches back almost half a century. Alvin Toffler in 1962 declared in a book that the practice of smearing ink on dead trees was “the last smokestack industry” and would die. A decade ago, Geoffrey Nunberg, in The Future of the Book, declared that “if by books we mean bound printed volumes, then most books will likely disappear soon”. He wisely proffered no date.
I was listening to another series of comments inspired by Cherie Blair’s memoirs as I was reading The Guardian (electronically) and came across Simon Jenkyns column. I’m fascinated by the way our thoughts so often lead us to the medium rather than the message, and here again it’s the book that’s more interesting than the memoir.
Christians were once known as the people of the book, but in their case the message is far more dynamic than the medium. As someone said recently in his observation of Christians, before he became one himself. ”
Christians are these people who are so judgemental, incredibly dull and uptight and yet they believe in something that is so insane it makes Lord of the Rings sound like a dull episode of the Archers.
If you want to hear the whole talk it was given by Charlie Mackesy at Holy Trinity Brompton recently. You’ll love his jokes!
New Technology is still a million miles away from displacing the book - even now the only advantage of reading on screen is the immediacy - otherwise old tech print wins hands down for me.
BBC NEWS | UK | McCanns mark Madeleine’s birthday
McCanns mark Madeleine’s birthday
Madeleine McCann has been missing for just over a year
The parents of Madeleine McCann have been marking the fifth birthday of their missing daughter with a low-key party at their family home.
Today is the fifth birthday of this little girl who went missing in The Algarve last year.
Let’s pray for her family and trust that she may yet be found.
Up To 250k Lottery Cash For Church Restoration Is Spurned
A church in York is putting its money where its mouth is - by rejecting lottery funding for its rebuilding work.
St Michael le Belfrey, next to York Minster, is raising money for a major restoration of its west front. But the church council has decided not to seek money from the Heritage Lottery Fund, because the fund promotes gambling. The church needs about £500,000 and says it is relying on its congregation to raise the money, without the need for lottery grants.
This is my church - and while I don’t agree with the PCC’s decision not to accept lottery funding, I believe we do have a responsibility to maintain this ancient building in working order. The congregation was delighted to move into it when David Watson was made the rector in the ’70s, so now we have to do our part in a long line of history to repair the stonework so that we can pass it to the next generation as our heritage.
What most people will find staggering is that we have pledged to raise double the sum needed so that we can give away as much as we spend on repairs. Watch this space.
A year ago this little girl disappeared in Portugal. Abducted from her holiday home while her parents enjoyed a meal a short distance away. Since then Madeleine McCann’s picture has never been far from the front pages of British Newspapers. Soon it will be her fifth birthday.
On her last birthday I blogged that we should light a candle for each year of her life and use it as a focus to pray for her return in the hope that this year she would blow out the candles at home with her parents. Sadly there’ll be an extra candle but still no Madeleine unless something amazing happens in the mean time. Never give up praying.
It’s some time time since I listened to the U2 album Rattle and Hum. They were on fire - Unforgettable. I have this album on Vinyl and at sometime I had transferred it onto cassette and later minidisc. I was in the process of transferring it again this time onto my hard drive. It’s a process I can only describe as tedious, so I looked on iTunes to see what price it was. Just £5.49 - so I bought it. So now it’s on my iPhone.
Pride still brings tears to my eyes and I still haven’t found what I’m looking for with the gospel choir is spine chilling.
Perhaps I like this album because it touches the gospel roots planted in me as a boy.
Ruth Gledhill - Times Online - WBLG: Zimbabwe: ‘The devil came late today.’
This might not look like the average Mothers’ Union meeting as we know them in Britain, but in terms of peacefulness, good works, child-centredness and Christian goodness, the Mothers’ Union branch in Harare is no different from its UK counterparts. Having known more hardship, its members are probably even more good than the unsung English stalwarts who keep the churches here upright in every sense. There can be no true explanation then for why, shortly after this photograph was taken, this meeting was broken up by Zimbabwe riot police.
Evidence of pointless intimidation in Zimbabwe, and the resilience of The Mothers Union!
