Beckenham Baptist Church

Dear Friends,  As the Lenten journey moves towards its conclusion for another year, we can perhaps begin to see on the horizon Holy Week, beginning with Palm Sunday which we will celebrate next Sunday. Words and images that we associate with Palm Sunday are palm branches, donkeys, celebrations, and the word ‘Hosanna!’ which means ‘Save us!’. It is what the crowds cried out as Jesus entered the city of Jerusalem for the Passover Festival, where people gathered from all over the known world to celebrate, and it is a reminder that Jesus’ coming wasn’t just a little local event but that he came for all people everywhere and in all time and space – including you and me. But the question might come, ‘How do I become a Christian?’ The apostle Paul writing to the believers at Rome gives them a simple and beautiful answer, telling them, ‘If you declare with your mouth, “Jesus is Lord”, and believe in your heart that God raised him from the dead, you will be saved. For it is with your hear...

Dear Friends,  As part of my Lenten journey this year I’m using the 40 daily reflections entitled Dust and Glory – a Lent Journey of Faith, Failure and Forgiveness by Emma Ineson. This last week’s reflections came under the title of ‘Sinning as well as we can?’ and one of the readings highlighted was, ‘If we confess our sins, he who is faithful and just will forgive us our sins and cleanse us from all unrighteousness’ (1 John 1:9). Under the heading, Forgetting like God forgets , Inerson gives a reminder that once we have brought our confession to God, ‘God does something remarkable with our sins, and his memory of them’. From the prophet Isaiah we read that the Lord says, ‘I, I am He who blots out your transgressions for my own sake, and I will not remember your sins ’ (Isaiah 43:25). It is amazing to know that God is very forgetful when it comes to our sin and that we can know his forgiveness, undeserved though it may be, as a gift and a comfort in our journey of faith. Grace an...

  Dear Friends, This week sees the celebration of the patron saint of Ireland, St Patrick, on March 17 th . Born in Roman Britain in the 4 th Century, in his early teenage years he was kidnapped and taken to Ireland as a slave. He escaped but returned around 432AD and was instrumental in bringing Christianity to Ireland. He is associated with the ‘Morning Prayer’ or St Patrick’s Breastplate’, a prayer that captures our complete faith and trust in God as Creator and Sustainer.   I arise today through the strength of heaven; light of the sun, splendour of fire, speed of lightning, swiftness of the wind, depth of the sea, stability of the earth, firmness of the rock. I arise today through God’s strength to pilot me; God’s might to uphold me, God’s wisdom to guide me, God’s eye to look before me, God’s ear to hear me, God’s word to speak for me, God’s hand to guard me, God’s way to lie before me, God’s shield to protect me, God’s hosts to save me afar and anear, alone or ...

  Dear Friends,   I wonder if you are familiar with the Community of the Cross of Nails , a worldwide network of churches, charities, training organisations, chaplaincies and schools that, ‘share a common commitment to work and pray for peace, justice and reconciliation’. It is based at Coventry Cathedral and describes its three guiding principles as healing the wounds of history, learning to live with difference and celebrate diversity, and building a culture of peace. After the bombing of the cathedral in 1940 the inscription ‘Father, forgive’ was written onto the ruins, and today that response is said every weekday at noon in the new cathedral and around the world by members of the community using the ‘Coventry Litany of Reconciliation’ which was written by Canon Joseph Poole in 1958. The response isn’t ‘Father, forgive them ’ because Poole did not seek revenge but the recognition that all have sinned and need forgiveness. In using the litany during Lent, it ‘gives a stru...