Beckenham Baptist Church

Dear Friends, At a recent funeral service I led we sand the hymn ‘ Praise, my soul, the King of heaven ’ by Henry Francis Lyte, an Anglican clergyman of the 19 th Century who served for 24 years in Lower Brixham, Devonshire. I do like to know something of the story behind the hymns that I sing, and I discovered that H F Lyte was born near Kelso in Scotland and studied at Trinity College Dublin where he won the prize for an English poem three times, his hymns revealing his poetic gifts. Although he was already ordained, he underwent a profound religious experience at the deathbed of a brother clergyman in 1817. Both found a deeper faith and Lyte’s own work and preaching received a new vitality because of the experience. He was a man known to be frail in body, suffering from chronic asthma and tuberculosis, but strong in faith and spirit. He retired from his parish in September 1847 at the age of 54 to go and live in Italy where the climate would be more suited to his ailments. He sadly...

Dear Friends,  As I sit and write this week’s thought the temperature outside is due to reach a sweltering 32⁰C and the weather app on my phone tells me that the real feel will be 34⁰C (that’s 93.2⁰F) – phew it is HOT!!! This week sees the official first day of Summer when one of the Earth’s poles has its maximum tilt toward the Sun which is at its highest position in the sky giving the longest period of daylight, all of which takes place on Tuesday 21 st June. From a website called ‘time and date’, described as ‘the world’s number one website on time’, I discovered that there will be precisely 16h38m22s of daylight on that day and that after that the nights will begin to draw in and we will lose fractions of daylight as the days progress, 3s on 22 nd , 9s on 23 rd , 15s on 24 th , and so on, so make the most of 21 st . Sometimes we hear people use the phrase, ‘the days of our lives’, referring to the sum of our earthly existence and our accomplishments, which the Psalmist tells u...

Dear Friends,  June 12 th is the birth date of Anne Frank who was born in Frankfurt, Germany, in 1929 and who wrote a bestselling diary detailing her life and thoughts between 1943-1945 entitled, Anne Frank: Diary of a Young Girl . It is one of the world’s most famous books and it began on Anne’s 13 th birthday when she was given as a gift a journal which she kept as her family hid from the Nazis in a small hideout next to where her father, Otto, worked. As the rise of the Nazi party in Germany advanced, Otto Frank had decided to move his family to Amsterdam, but as war broke out in 1939 and countries fell under the control of the Nazis the situation became bleak for many Jewish families and others. The Frank family hid for two years until they were eventually captured and sent to concentration camps where the only survivor was Otto Frank, Anne dying of Typhus along with her older sister, Margot, in March 1945, just a month before the liberation by the allied soldiers. Anne’s f...

Dear Friends,  For the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee in 2012 I was at my previous church in Sheffield (we moved later that year to Beckenham), and I have been re-reading the article I wrote on that occasion for the church magazine, part of which said, ‘ 60 Glorious Years! The month of June marks the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee celebrations with a whole host of activities, parties, get-togethers and pomp and ceremony to mark this truly once-in-a-lifetime achievement. Only one other monarch has reached this milestone in their reign and that was Queen Victoria in 1897, and we will probably have to wait a very long time for another Diamond Jubilee – it will not be in our lifetime, so we had better make the most of it! ’ I guess what I didn’t foresee then was that a Platinum Jubilee would follow with the same outpouring of gratitude and thanksgiving for the Queen’s life and 70-year reign, together with street parties, activities and pomp and ceremony just like ten years ago. I was interested to r...