After a crazy busy weekend and Monday (my day off, ha ha!) I finally was able to sit down for a couple of hours and just finished watching Superbowl XLIV, a day late and after hearing the result on the radio this morning (I watched the first quarter of the game before going to bed last night)! I was very surprised to hear that the New Orleans Saints had won, and actually, despite the annoyance of hearing the result, I was fascinated to see how they had done it.

When I went to bed the form book seemed to be quite correct with a dominant first quarter by the Indianapolis Colts - a team which I admire, but do not get remotely passionate about. Like many millions of other NFL fans I was rooting for the underdogs, the New Orleans Saints, to win the game. Partly this was because of the images of the decimated New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina when the Superdome, the Saints's home stadium, became a refuge place for thousands of homeless residents.

What a great victory for the Saints, and what a boost for the city, still wracked with problems following the hurricane. [There's more...]

On Monday night the office bearers in St Andrew's met for the first time with a couple of members of the Parish Planning committee of Hamilton Presbytery. This will be the first in a series of meetings over the coming months. They are important meetings as they will shape the future Church of Scotland representation in Blantyre.

For many in St Andrew's as in our sister congregations in the town, there will be inevitable fears and worries that come with the prospect of change. As much as I can, I will try to share with you why this process is necessary and what is happening as we go through the process. I hope this will be helpful for those of you who are connected to the Church of Scotland in Blantyre. A pre-warning, however, that this post is quite lengthy!

So why is the presbytery coming to talk to us anyway? [There's more...]

I must admit I had a good laugh at this talk from Julia Sweeney which is titled Letting Go of God and is one of three autobiographical monologues she performs; this one referencing belief.

I'm thinking this could be a good discussion starter for our next Beer 'n' Bible which is on Thursday 28 January.

[Hat tip to Daniel Manastireanu]

I love the colours in this photograph of hand-made juggling balls on sale in Soho Market, London (Photo by Anders Jacobsen), and it seems appropriate for today.

I'm sure other ministers with families will recognise the juggling act and pressures of trying to be both available for your children and to be present at the various church activities that take up many evenings.

Today Carolyn was at work all evening and I had the juggling act of trying to be present at the ecumenical service for the Week of Prayer for Christian Unity and taking one of our daughters to her gymnastics in preparation for a display they are putting on. Thankfully a friend was babysitting for the other three children, but by the time I got back from East Kilbride the service would have been just about over.

It can be frustrating: sometimes you are able to keep all the balls dancing in the air, but, as with tonight, sometimes you just can't. Trying to balance which ball gets dropped is the difficult bit. [There's more...]

Dr David Bain, philosopher at Glasgow University, reflects on the age-old question of why there is suffering in the world, as made so explicitly clear in Haiti, and how theologians and philosophers have tried to explain God's role in human suffering.

As the philosopher David Hume (echoing Epicurus) put it in 1776: "Is God willing to prevent evil, but not able? Then he is impotent. Is he able, but not willing? Then he is malevolent. Is he both able and willing? Whence then is evil?"

A full day of meetings today from a personal one-to-one meeting in the morning, a chaplaincy team meeting all afternoon and then presbytery committees this evening. I got home just in time to put kids to bed while Carolyn headed out for her own Sunday Funday Club meeting tonight!

Before heading over to Hamilton for the meeting in the afternoon with the chaplaincy team I had checked the status of the print job for all the Easter Code resource books and found that they had been despatched on Friday... and were on a van! However, they didn't arrive in time for that meeting, they came around 6 p.m. but in time to take a few to Motherwell this evening for presbytery.

They look absolutely spiffy and contain all you need to know to put on "The Easter Code: Can you crack it?" with Primary 7 children.

I've edited the three videos that will go on the accompanying CD-ROM but still need to get the other files organised for the disks but should be able to finish that tomorrow and then we can start to despatch the books to those who have already ordered theirs, and take on new orders! If you are involved in children's work or school chaplaincy, then make sure you get your copy! Order here.

Today was a good day with a door opening for a new possibility - always fun. After a rather dark assembly at the primary school (no power) I picked up a friend (and colleague!) and we trekked over to Roddy Hamilton's place in Clydebank to meet with a few other souls to think about worship.

An idea has been bubbling around for some time to think about producing our own worship and children's resources for Sundays. It was great to see this idea start to take some shape today in practical terms. So what did we do today? [There's more...]

Like all of you, I have been watching images from Haiti with horror to see the devastation wrought by the earthquake and after shocks in that impoverished country.

The suffering is awful, and there are no doubt countless families like the father and daughter above who have lost everything and are grieving tonight the loss of family members.

My prayer is with them all in their moment of utmost need.

[There's more...]

The thaw is well and truly on, and the pavements even more slippery, though I believe there may be a dash more snow on Thursday...

On Sunday during the Souper Sunday service we were reminded of C.S. Lewis' description of Narnia as a place where it was always winter and never Christmas... Lest we forget what the last few weeks have been like, how about this stunning satellite image of Scotland? Click on it for a larger image of the whole of the UK. Quite simply, wow!

On Sunday night some of the young folks in the church gathered together at the manse for a movie night. I had been discussing earlier in the week what movie to pick but in the end decided we should all pick the movie together so it wasn't one that all the young folks had seen already.

However, after forty-five minutes of discussion, I wondered if a little despotism might have been helpful! What was amusing was that one of the films that had popped into mind during the week as a possibility but then out again as being too serious for a first IQ Group night back after Christmas was actually the film that most of us could agree on... so instead of Star Trek, Ice Age 3, Monsters vs Aliens, etc... we watched The Boy in the Striped Pyjamas. [There's more...]